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Universttas Catholica 
Americae, Washingtonii. 

S. Facui/tas Tkeologica. 
1894-95. 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION 



PRECEDED BY 



A HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM 



DKTJS LUX MKA. 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION 



BEING AN EXAMINATION OF 



SPENCER'S RELIGION OF THE UNKNOWABLE 



PRECEDED BY 



A HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM 



V 



DISSERTATION 

For the Doctorate in Theology 
At the Catholic University of America 

REV. GEORGE J. LUCAS n 



'- You adore that which you know not: 
we adore that which we know.' — John iv, 22. 



BALTIMORE : 

JOHN MURPHY & CO. 
1895. 




THE LIflRARYl 
Of C ONG RESS! 

WASHINGTON 






Copyright, 1895, by John Murphy & C!o. 



TO 



THE RIGHT REV. WILLIAM O'HARA, D. D. 



BISHOP OF SCEANTON 



AS A TOKEN OF 



REVERENT ESTEEM 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction. 



F»art I. 

HISTORY OF THE RISE OF AGNOSTICISM FROM 
XENOPHANES TO SPENCER. 



CHAPTER I. 

Ancient Agnostic Doctrines. 

1. Agnosticism. — Its Definition 15 

2. Hindu Sensationalism 18 

3. Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras 19 

4. Democritus 22 

5. The Sophists. — Protagoras 24 

6. Aristotle, the Father of Modern Realism 25 



CHAPTER II. 
Modern Agnostic Doctrines. 

J" 7. Bacon.... 27 

I 8. Descartes ... 29 

I 9. Huxley on the I think therefore I am 34 

10. Locke... 39 

11. Berkeley 42 

12. Hume 42 

13. Kant 47 

14. Hamilton and Mansel 51 

15. Comte v 52 

16. Mill 54 

17. The Modern Physical Science Agnostics. — Huxley , 56 

18. Tyndall 59 

7 



CONTENTS. 



Part II. 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION - BEING AN EXAMINATION 
OF SPENCER'S RELIGION OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 



PAGE. 

General Notion 61 

CHAPTEK I. 
Spencer's Religion Considered from the Historical Standpoint. 

\ 19. Keligion not Mere Nescience. — Testimonies of Philosophers of All 

Schools 64 

$ 20. Eeligion not Mere Theory. — Testimonies of All Creeds 70 

\ 21. The Unknowable not the Object of Keligion. — Sir W. Hamilton's 

Authorities , 76 

\ 22. The Unknowable not the Object of Eeligion. — Historical Compara- 
tive Examination of the Religions 83 

\ 23. The Religion of the Unknowable not a Progressive Religion 92 

CHAPTER II. 

Spencer's Religion Considered from the Metaphysical Standpoint. 

§ 24. Question Stated, 95 

\ 25. Ultimate Religious Ideas — Self- Existence, Creation, The Cause, The 

Absolute, The Infinite 96 

§ 26. Ultimate Scientific Ideas — Force, Consciousness, Life 106 

\ 27. The Relativity of All Knowledge 112 

g 28. The Unknowable.— Its Attributes 114 

\ 29. The Unknowable as the Reconciliation of Religion, Science and 

Philosophy 124 

\ 30. The Unknowable Versus Christianity.— Which is Scientific?.. 128 

I 31. The Unknowable as the New God.... 133 

CHAPTER III. 
Conspectus and Conclusion 134 



APPENDIX. 
Theses 137 



INTRODUCTION 



Physical Science has come in like a giant to revolutionize the 
present race of men. The changes its wonderful discoveries have 
effected, have come like a new apocalypse of Nature. This no one 
will feel inclined td call in question. On the bearing of the new 
discoveries on Religion, however, we have not the same unanimous 
voice. The great majority of the scientific names believe that 
Religion is not impaired but ennobled by the Evolutionary Hypo- 
thesis. They believe that the Law of Evolution is not only not 
incompatible with an Infinite Mind, but that the concept of the 
Deity working by Evolution, is far more exalted than the theory 
of Special Creations, and that Religion is thereby elevated in the 
same proportion and degree. There are some scientists, however, 
who maintain that the proof of Evolution is the disproof of God. 
They regard Religion as the enemy of Science, and proclaim that 
Science has been, all along the way, impeded on her onward march 
by Religion, and that now that she has triumphed, as they say, 
she has given to Religion her death-blow. This form of scientific 
faith has been preached and is being preached, on either continent, 
on platforms and in multitudinous essays, pamphlets and books, 
by brilliant but not always profound representatives of the anti- 
theistic camp. As a result, this anti-theistic spirit is in the air, it 
has spread among the masses, a George Eliot writes it, a Swinburne, 
a Leconte de Lisle sings it. This new Time-Spirit (" Zeit-Geist") 
has grown so strong in England, that an eminent writer tells us 
that at the universities, it is the predominant creed among the 
undergraduates and the younger dons, and that it is sometimes 
heard in drawing-rooms from women's lips. And in this country, 
all statistics agree, that an alarming percentage of our people are 
Don -Church goers. 

This revolutionary spirit has been swelled to its, I may say, 
oceanic vastness by two main causes. The first is the uprising 
2 9 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

against the realistic philosophy, inaugurated by Descartes, and 
continued by such eminent thinkers as Berkeley, Kant and Hume, 
during this trinity of centuries down to the present day. This 
philosophy drank in the spirit of the ancient forms of materialism, 
skepticism and idealism or phenomenalism, and the anti-theists of 
the present day are intoxicated with it. 

The second chief source of the revolt grew out of the peculiar 
fact, that the hostile scientists confuse diverse religious opinions with 
Religion itself, and thus misstate and misrepresent Religion'. And 
because the new discoveries, as they interpreted them, seemed to be 
at enmity with one or another of the religious interpretations, they 
at once hastened to the conclusion, that Science had annihilated the 
Bible-Religion and all vestiges of belief in the Infinite Mind. 
Perhaps the most gigantic of the misrepresentations to which we 
have reference, is the statement — which the reader of the smallest 
magazine knows by heart — that evolution has demonstrated the 
foolishness of the creational account in the first chapter of Genesis, 
and has rendered utterly superfluous the demand for any Designing 
Mind behind the Universe of things. A superficial study of Church 
History might have informed those learned men, that the Theory of 
Evolution first emanated from the brain of the greatest Doctor of 
the early Church, and that it was actually propounded by him as 
the true and only exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis. And if 
the Evolutional hypothesis is such an evident destruction of an 
Intelligent Creator, is it not strange that the critical genius of Kant 
has not mentioned it among his famous disproofs of the existence 
of God? is not strange that the theistic that the Christian intellects 
of Laplace and Sir John Herschel, were able to perceive in it a 
nobler and sublimer expression of the wisdom of the Mighty 
Artificer? Yet these three are the modern creators of the Law 
of Evolution. 

The regress to the Greek Materialism, Sensism, Phenomenalism, 
having thus joined hands with the most vitiated confounding of 
Religion with its free interpretations, has easily shaped itself into, 
what we may nominate, the Modern Philosophic Auti-theistic 
Science. The pivotal principles of this Science are three, Denial 
of God, Identification of the mind and soul of man and of all 
things with Matter, and the consequent extension of the hypothesis 
of Evolution, not alone to the physical universe, but to all forms of 



INTR OD UCTIOK 1 1 

life, mental life included, " mind is only a transitory appearance in 
the eternal evolutions of Matter." And this Science is paraded 
and preached, and has taken a deep hold among the masses as among 
the cultured ; it calls itself Science, as if it were the only Science, 
and introduces itself on all occasions, as if it and the Science which 
all admit, were identical ; and it especially introduces itself, as the 
liberator, which has disenthralled the living century from religious 
slavery and all belief in a Personal God. 

The fruits of this Science, now that verstorben ist der Herrgott 
oben, now that the Great Companion is dead, as the wail has gone 
forth, are, to put it calmly, the extinction of all future hope, the 
extinction of all true morality, of that righteousness which Matthew 
Arnold found a solace in, as the " Tliree-fourihs of life;" the 
extinction of the nobility of man's intellect, for is it not matter and 
shall he not perish like the beasts of the field ? This is no exagger- 
ation, on such a theme exaggerative language is impossible, and the 
followers of the new Science have felt the awfulness of the misery. 
The late Prof. Clifford, describing the " utter loneliness " he felt at 
the loss of God, says : — 

"We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven upon a soulless 
earth." 

And 'Physicus' in concluding his Candid Examination of 
Theism, sobs : — 

"I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, the precept 
c Know thyself has been transformed into the terrific oracle of (Edipus, ' Mayest 
thou never know the truth of what thou art.' " 

Now before this tremendous problem how must we stand ? Thirty 
years ago Cardinal Newman said, " Let us discuss the prospects of 
Christianity itself, instead of the differences between Anglican and 
Catholic." To-day he would have said, let us discuss the prospects 
of Religion itself, instead of the differences between Catholic and 
Protestant. The great Cardinal's day has passed, but Cardinal 
Gibbons says it in his place, and to the American people. In the 
Introduction to Our Christian Heritage the Cardinal seeks an alli- 
ance with the Protestant Churches, in defence of the common citadel, 
in the following language : — 

" Far from despising or rejecting their support, I would gladly hold out to them 
the right hand of fellowship, so long as they unite with us in striking the com- 
mon foe." 



y 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

And the same writer addresses this same invitation to our Pro- 
testant brothers again, but this time as the messenger of the most 
authoritative teacher living, the greatest religious intellect of this 
century, Leo the thirteenth. 1 And indeed the spirit of this unity 
against anti-Theism — for with us Christian Unity means theistic 
unity, as anti- Christian unity means anti-theistic unity — is recipro- 
cated by the most eminent voices representative of the Protestant 
creeds. The late Bishop Brooks said : — 

"The world is trembling on the brink of atheism, while men are frittering 
away their lives in championing the shibboleths of their creeds." 

In surveying the field of Scientific Anti-Religionism, we discern 
that it concentrates, embodies itself in Agnosticism, and Messrs. 
Huxley, Tyndall and Spencer are its apostles. These three men, 
more than any men living, have established and evangelized the 
new Science ; their writings and it are synonymous, and anything 
outside of their writings is not worth considering, agnostically ; 
their utterances are the new gospel, the agnostic-science-revelation. 
Of these three Mr. Spencer is the acknowledged coryphaeus. Pro- 
fessors Huxley and Tyndall's works are collections of scattered essays 
and lectures, which evince no philosophic unity; in addition, neither 
one admits any Religion as a substitution for exploded Theism. 
Mr. Spencer, on the contrary, propounds a substitutive Religion, and 
he proposes the philosophical and scientific claims for his religious 
view, side by side, with the philosophical and scientific claims for 
antagonistic Theism, not in a disconnected form but in one closely 
packed volume. Mr. Spencer is the agnostic leader ; Prof. Tyndall 
in The Belfast Address, in rapturous admiration, styles him "the 
Apostle of the Understanding ; " and four years ago, when he was 
entertained at a banquet in New York, at which there were present 
presidents of colleges, scientists and other savants, in the toast of 
the evening, Mr. Spencer was addressed in these woftls : — 

"We recognize in your knowledge greater comprehensiveness than in any other 
living man, or than has been presented by any one in our generation." 

Mr. Spencer is the personification of Religious Agnosticism ; the 
first part of the first volume of his Synthetic Philosophy, entitled 

1 Christian Unity, Introduction to the Pope's Encyclical, on Christian Unity, in 
Scranton Truth, Oct. 25, 1894. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

The Unknowable, is the completed and systematic expression of that 
personification to which we have referred. For this reason, in 
consonance with the spirit of Christian Unity spoken of above, we 
have chosen this Work as the subject of this ' Dissertation/ In 
The Unknowable, Mr. Spencer attaches only a secondary importance 
to the claims of the Bible-Religion as such, what he strives to 
impress, is the argument that Agnostic Science and Agnostic Meta- 
physics have rendered impossible and obsolete, the very conception 
of any Personal Deity. It is not Christianity that Mr. Spencer 
demolishes, it is Theism, it is not Revealed Religion that he consigns 
to the effete and dead past, it is all Religion, i. e., all belief in a 
Personal God. This makes the issue in the present struggle, 
primarily and directly turn, not on the reasonableness of the divine 
foundations of the faith, which God has revealed to us through His 
Eternal Son, and which we all believe, but on the underlying 
foundations of those very foundations, viz., on the fundamental 
concepts of Natural Religion, of Religion as it discloses itself 
to the naked eye of reason. The criticism of The Unknowable 
therefore, which we are about to enter on, will in its main outlines 
be simply this, a plain and sincere investigation of the demands of 
the Agnostic Metaphysic and Agnostic Science and Religion, for 
religious sovereignty. It will be simply this, has Religious and 
Scientific Agnosticism brought valid reasons, for the repudiation of 
the Living God, and the substitution of the Unknowable Non- 
Living God in his stead? or on the contrary, is Agnosticism but a 
passing storm, a blast and blare of trumpets, summoning an army 
of mere spectral fancies, against the philosophic and truly scientific 
phalanxes of good solid facts and good solid arguments, which 
surround the inexpugnable fortress of the concept of a Personal 
God, and of its correlate a Theistic Religion ? This latter we 
maintain and will endeavor to make good in our criticism of 
Mr. Spencer. 

The agnostic metaphysics form the principal ingredient in the 
demonstration of The Unknowable. A clear conception of what 
one's adversaries mean, is always a help and very often an argument ; 
and when the reader approaches a controversy fully enlightened, 
concerning the exact ground and the exact strength, on w T hich the 
discussion rests, it is superfluous to say it will be an advantage to 
him. In the present case, this advantage is augmented a hundred 



I 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

fold, by the true understanding of what the agnostic philosophy is, 
for it is not what the generality take it to be. For these reasons, 
we have preceded the analysis of The Unknowable, by an historical 
sketch of the agnostic metaphysic, tracing it from the teachings of 
the Greek philosophy of Doubt down to Mr. Spencer, for the whole 
substance and color of his thought is saturated with it. This, to 
our mind, presents a complete view of the existent religious form 
of Agnosticism, and leaves nothing to be desiderated to the full 
and rounded examination of The Unknowable and the theistic 
reply to it. 

In selecting the present theme, as we just explained it, as the 
subject-matter of our " Dissertation " for the degree of Doctor in 
Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic University of America, it is 
unnecessary to add that the selection has been made, under the 
approval of the University Faculty ; and it is proper to state, that 
although as the Very Reverend Dean has informed us, the three 
learned Professors to whom was committed the examination of this 
Dissertation, have each given it the sanction of their approbation, 
yet they are by no means to be held responsible for all the opinions 
expressed in it. To the author attaches this responsibility. 

In conclusion we hope that this attempt may bring some light, 
if but to a few, who are led astray by the illusive light of the Pseudo 
Science and the Pseudo Religion, and that it may make them see 
that the Religion of the Living God is built on such a rock of 
truth, that no present, or possible future revelation of Science can 
storm it, that all present and possible future discovery must har- 
monize with it. For the harmonization of Science and Religion is 
simply the blending of different colors of the one white truth. 



PART I. 

THE RISE OF AGNOSTICISM 

FROM 

XENOPHANES TO SPENCER. 



CHAPTER I. 

Ancient Agnostic Doctrines. 
§ 1. — Agnosticism: its Definition. 

The word Agnostic is derived from the Greek, and literally means 
one who does not know. The kindred term in classical Greek is 
Agnostos, it signifies 'unknown/ 'not knowing/ 'ignorant of.' 
The vocabulum Agnostic, or Agnosticos, which would be the Greek 
form, is not found in the Greek. Agnostic is made up of 'a' 
privative and ' gnostic.' Consequently, an Agnostic is he to whom 
the quality of being a Gnostic is denied. Let us see what a Gnostic 
is. This word is rarely met with in classical authors, and it signi- 
fies one endowed with the faculty of knowledge or 'gnosis.' 

Gnosis with the Greeks designated knowledge, but was generally 
applied to knowledge of the highest rank. Pythagoras styles 
Transcendental Philosophy, or the Science of Being in the abstract, 
Gnosis ton onton. 1 Plato applies the word to certain and stable 
cognition as opposed to opinion. The latter, he says, is unfixed 
and unstable and appertains to things mutable and fleeting, while 
the former belongs to things immutable and eternal, and is a lofty 
apprehension of those truths which surpass the senses, and are 

1 Diogenes Laertes, Pythagoras, lib. viii, quoted by F. Giraud, Ophitae, Dissertatio 
Inauguralis (ad Magisterii lauream in collegio theologico Insulensi comparandam), 
p. 5, Insulis in Gallia, 1884. 

15 



16 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

contemplated by the intelligence alone. 1 In the New Testament, 
the word recurs and signifies : l heretical knowledge/ ' divine 
faith/ ' theological knowledge' or ' divine science founded on 
faith/ 2 In harmony with these Scriptural uses, Clement of Alex- 
andria defines Gnosis as " the firm and fixed demonstration of those 
verities which are built upon the faith of the Lord, which cannot 
disappear or perish, and as such are truly worthy the name of 
science. 3 

This true gnosis a powerful heretical body of the early Church, 
beginning, some historians affirm, in the time of Simon Magus, 
wished to make their own. Jumbling up into a heap, the Platonic 
and Pythagorean placita and the teachings of faith, they created a 
new and divine philosophy. The simplicity of the common class 
of mortals could not enter the charmed esoteric circles of this sub- 
lime gnosis. Thus, in contradistinction to those who accepted pure 
and unadulterated the doctrines of the Eedeemer, they styled 
themselves Gnostics. Their pretentiousness reached such a height 
that we find them evolving from the divine essence, such distinct 
and independent entities as Reason, Intellect, Wisdom, Power and 
Peace. These primary emanations they conceived produced others 
less ethereal, which in their turn, begot other less subtile emanations. 
Entirely there were three hundred and sixty five emanations, each 
of a less rare essence, each in its own realm or sphere, in which it 
reigned, supreme. The lowest, that is the three hundred and sixty- 
fifth sphere, bordered on matter. Its chief archon or lord reduced 
the original chaos of matter, and so became the creator of what we 
call the world. 4 This is the system of the JBasilidians. As in the 
Hindu philosophy, it conceives creation pure and resplendent at its 
first issue but becoming less ethereal and bright at the extremities. 

The Agnostics, at least in name, profess themselves the very 
opposite of the Gnostics of old. They modestly declare they know 
nothing, and that nothing can be known. Let us hear Prof. 
Huxley, who states that he is the creator of the term. He tells us 
that when he was a member of the Metaphysical Society, most of 

1 Republic, Book v, ch. xxii, p. 167, in Plato's Works, vol. ii (Bonn's trans.), Lon- 
don, New York, 1894. 

8 1 Cor., ch. viii, v. 1 ; / Tim., ch. vi, v. 20; Luke, ch. i, v. 77 ; Rom., ch. ii, v. 20. 

3 Strom, ch. vii, 10. Cf. ch. vi, 1, i. 20 ; ii. 11, quoted by Giraud, op. cit., p. 9. 

4 A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, pp. 4, 5, 3 ed., London, 1SS9. 






AGNOSTICISM: ITS DEFINITION. 17 

his colleagues were Ists of one sort or another ; to give his own 
opinions a name he called himself an agnostic : — 

"I took thought," he affirms, "and invented what I conceived to be the appro- 
priate title of ' Agnostic' It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 
'gnostic' of Church History who professed to know so much about the very 
things of which he was ignorant." l 

He writes in the same article : — 

" I further say that Agnosticism is not properly described as a ' negative ' creed, 
nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith 
in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual. This 
principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this : that it is 
wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition 
unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This 
is what Agnosticism asserts; and in my opinion, it is all that is essential to 
Agnosticism." 

With all respect for the inventor of this important word, this 
definition would make mathematics Agnosticism, yes and physics 
and biology and every other science under the sun. It would make 
even theology — which the professor so heartily hates — Agnosticism, 
and this too out of Prof. Huxley's own mouth. " The scientific 
theologian," he states in the same essay, " admits the Agnostic 
principle, however widely his results may differ from those reached 
by the majority of Agnostics." The mathematician, the physicist, 
the biologist, the theologian all affirm equally with Prof. Huxley 
that " it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective 
truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which 
logically justifies that certainty." But no one will say that mathe- 
matics, or physics or biology or theology are Agnosticism, as I 
remarked above. Hence we must turn from Prof. Huxley's all- 
embracing definition and seek a more distinctive description. We 
fear too — Prof. Huxley's asseveration to the contrary notwith- 
standing — that we shall find Agnosticism a very ' negative creed.' 

Not to speak of Mr. Harrison's terse definition, when he puts 
himself the query : — " Why then do we object to being called 
Agnostics ? Simply because Agnostic is dog-Greek for ' Don't 
know.' " 2 — Webster has the following definition : — 

1 Agnosticism and Christianity, Nineteenth Century, June, 1889. 

2 The Ghost of Religion, Nineteenth Century, March, 1884. 



\ 



18 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM, 

" Agnosticism is that doctrine which professing ignorance, neither asserts nor 
denies; specifically in theology, the doctrine that the existence of a personal 
deity can be neither asserted nor denied, neither proved nor disproved, because 
of the necessary limits of the human mind (as sometimes charged upon Hamilton 
and Mansel) or because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by psychical 
and physical data to warrant a positive conclusion (as taught by Herbert Spencer) 
opposed alike to dogmatic skepticism and to dogmatic theism." x 

Another lucid definition, from a more philosophic and most 
authoritative source, is this : — 

" Agnosticism is a theory of the Unknowable which assumes its most definite 
form in the denial of the possibility of any knowledge of God. 1st kind: con- 
nected with theory that we know only the phenomenal and a logical deduction 
from it. 2d kind : held by those who do not hold the phenomenal theory of 
knowledge but rest their deduction that the Infinite and the Absolute are un- 
knowable on the limitation of human intelligence, maintaining that the infinite 
transcends the limits of our knowledge, and must on that account remain unknown, 
while the existence of the infinite God must be a matter of belief." 2 

We may add a third and last explanation of the limitation and 
nescience of the human mind, and of the object of this limitation 
and nescience, which shall put the matter in a still clearer light, if 
it is possible : — 

"The Agnostic professes," writes Very Rev. Dr. Hewitt, "ignorance of those 
deeper causes, namely of First and Final Causes, of the origin and the end of 
the universe, particularly of the world and of the beings contained in what is 
called in a wide and general sense nature. . . . The ignorance must be universal 
and necessary, arising from the nature of that which is unknown and from the 
nature of the human mind. The Agnostic professes that he cannot know, that 
no man can know that in respect of which he is an Agnostic. That is to say 
there is an unknowable in respect to which the profession of knowledge is a mere 
pretence." 3 

§ 2. — Hindu Sensationalism. 

The first and fundamental failing of the human reason, is to 
relinquish the noblest, the most useful and the most essential of all 
truths, the existence of the divine Being. This error — which is 
akin to intellectual suicide — seems to be as old as antiquity itself, 

1 Dictionary, unab. supp., new edit., 1888, Springfield, Mass. 

2 Schaff-Herzog, Encycl. of Religious Knowledge, p. 36. word Agnosticism (author 
Henry Calderwood), v. I., 3 ed., 1891, Toronto, New York, London. 

3 Amer. Oath. Quart. Rev., Jan., 1891, v. 16; The Christian Agnostic and the 
Christian Gnostic. Conf. Max Miiller, Why I am not an Agnostic, Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, p. 890, Dec, 1894. 



XENOPHANES, HERACLITUS, ANAXAGORAS. 19 

and it is certainly as new as current Agnosticism. When a school 
of philosophers bid adieu to the principle of God's existence, they 
promise fair to leave all else that is noble in truth beside. The 
history of philosophy points to no non-theistic school, which has 
not torn piece-meal all that is exalted in man, the grandeur of his 
higher nature, his superiority over matter, the essential difference 
between him and the lower forms of life, and the imperishableness 
of the higher part of him, when the lower and material part of his 
existence has begun to perish. Divorce from the verity that we 
know God to exist, is divorce from all its cognate and companion 
truths, divorce from all the fountain principles of true philosophy 
morality and religion. It is well for us to bear this in mind in 
sketching the growth of the Agnostic philosophy. 

These remarks are verified in the philosophy of the Orient. The 
moment it became divorced from the Vedas or Sacred Books, it 
became sensationalism. Sankhya they called it ; its founder was 
Kapila, whom we may style a Hindu Condillac. With Kapila 
all thought is but higher sensation, all sensation but a nobler form 
of matter. 1 These two principles are identical with modern Agnos- 
ticism. Kapila, no doubt, would have made a positive statement, 
and given us a theory telling us what sensation is, what matter is; 
the Agnostic, on the other hand, will limit himself to the affirmation 
that sensation is evolved from matter, but not to ask him what 
sensation or matter is, they are and must for ever be unknown. So 
far then as the selfsameness of intelligence, sensation, matter is 
concerned, the Agnostic has made no advance on the ancient Hindu. 

§ 3. — Incipient Greek Agnosticism : Xenophanes, 
Heraclitus, Anaxagoras. 

The first Greek philosophers, beginning with the Physicists under 

Thales, the Mathematicians under Anaximander and Pythagoras, 

and the Eleatics under Xenophanes and Zeno, confined themselves 

to speculations on the nature of the Universe. 2 The last of these 

schools, however, gave a part of their attention to the study of the 

deceptiveness of the faculties of knowledge, and in this way incho- 

• 
1 Cousin, History of Modern Philosophy, vol i., pp. 375-380 (transl. by O. W. 

Wight), New York, 1889. 

8 Lewes, History of Philosophy, v. 1, pp. 1-63, Library edit., New York, 1866. 



20 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

ated the Skeptical Philosophy. 1 This inchoation was as rude as 
Xenophanes its originator — whom Aristotle dubs as " a little too 
uncivilized" 2 — it did not tell us whether cognition was universally 
fallacious, or only at times and per accidens. For this reason we 
find Mr. Lewes, in the able work we have quoted, characterize the 
views of Xenophanes as " no systematic skepticism." 3 

Heraclitus appears to have been the first systematic doubter in 
Greek philosophy. The coarse doubts of Xenophanes and his 
school, of a certainty, stimulated Heraclitus to a study of the nature 
of certitude in itself. He beheld and was awfully impressed with the 
more than instantaneous, the more than protean mutability of 
things. " All is/' he said, " and is not ; for though in truth it 
does come into being, yet it forthwith ceases to be." 4 In this sen.^e, 
Aristotle says of him, that " affirming all things to be and not to 
be, he appeared to make all things true." 5 This doctrine Hegel 
declares to be an anticipation of his celebrated dogma "Being and 
Nothing is the same" The following is the reason he alleges : — 

"When Heraclitus says 'All is flowing (irdvTa f>u) ' he enunciates Becoming as 
the fundamental feature of all existence. . . . He then goes on to say : Being no 
more is than not-Being (ouSeu /xuWov rb ov rod /xrj ovtos £<tt\) : a statement ex- 
pressing the negativity of abstract Being, and its identity with non-Being, as 
made explicit in Becoming." 6 

The theory of Heraclitus founded on this doctrine of Becoming, 
viz., that all things are and are not, not only made "all things 
true," but also made all things false. For, by the fact that all 
things are, they are true : obversely, by the fact that all things 
not, they are false. No wonder, then, that Aristotle in summing 
up the affirmations of the diverse sects of Skeptics, finds the theory 
of Heraclitus to take them all in : He says : — 

"For almost all these assertions" (that is of the different classes of Skeptical 
philosophers) "are the same with those of Heraclitus; for this philosopher in 
affirming that all things are true and all things false, affirms also separately each of 
these theories." 7 

1 Ibid., p. 45. 

2 Melaphy., Book i, ch. v, p. 25 (Bonn's trans.), London, 1891. 

3 Ibid., p. 46. 4 Lewes, p. GS, op. cit. 
6 Melaphy., p. 108, op. cit. 

6 The Logic of Hegel (trans, by Wallace), p. 16S, 2 ed., Oxford, 1892. 

7 Metaph., p. 109, op. cit. — The Italics are mine. 



XENOPHANES, HERACLITUS, ANAXAGORAS. 21 

The ehangeableness, the ever-Becoming of all things constituted 
the philosophic basis of the tenets of the Heraclitics. Heraclitus' 
theory of Fire, as the first principle — the dpxv — of the universe, 
did not inflow into their theory of doubt. It was different with 
Anaxagoras. He too emphasized the theory of Becoming, but with 
him all Becoming is Becoming mixed, because there was and is no 
one first principle, and all things are made by the mixtures or 
fusions of an infinite multitude of primordial elements. 

Neither the Fire of Heraclitus, nor the Air of Anaximenes, nor 
the Water conceived by the first Greek physicist Thales, nor any 
other one first material principle, but an infinite diversity of such 
principles, which he names the " Homceomeries " mixed in different 
proportions, make up the material world. 1 This principle posited, 
he arrives at conclusions consimilar to those educed by Heraclitus 
from the ceaseless " flux and reflux " of the elements of the world. 
We will cite the words of Aristotle who states that his theory was : — 

"That there is a certain medium between contradiction ; so that all things are 
false, for when they are mingled, neither is the mixture good nor not good: 
wherefore there is nothing that one can affirm as true." 8 

This skepticism of Anaxagoras therefore is based on his 
" homoeornerian " mixings, and clearly betrays a confusion of ideas. 
It is possible that the mixtures be good when viewed under one 
aspect, and not good when viewed under another. Just as a man 
may be wise and not wise : he may be wise in one department 
and not wise in another. It does not therefore follow that be- 
cause the mixtures are good and not good, under different respects 
or aspects, that there results a contradiction, and that we must 
affirm both statements as false. Unless Anaxagoras wished to 
assert, that the mixtures were at the same time absolutely and 
in every respect good, and absolutely and in every respect bad, 
and this assuredly he did not wish to do. Aristotle explains 
this doctrine, which I have just stated, in the Metaphysics, Book 
iii, chapter iv, and it frequently enters into the later scholastic 
philosophy. 

Anaxagoras was the first among the Greeks to advocate a 
Supreme Intelligence as the primal Cause. This intelligence com- 

1 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, lib. i, 839. Conf. Aristotle, Metaph., pp. 16, 34, 
93, op. cit. 

2 Metaph., p. 108. Conf. p. 93, op. cit. 



\ 



22 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

bines the homoeomeries, hence results the beautiful harmonies of 
the worlds. This doctrine emerges like a flood of light, from the 
darkness of the theories of Fate and Chance of the pre-Socratic 
period, and places its author among the first chiefs of philosophic 
thinkers of all times. Mr. George Lewes, who is a positivist, and 
who will not be accused of excess of sympathy, remarks on this 
noble invention : — 

"A grand conception: one seldom rivalled in ancient speculation ; one so far 
in advance of the epoch as to be a puzzle to all critics." 1 

§ 4. — Democritus. 

Democritus lived in the fifth century before the Christian era. 
His philosophy as well as his birth is controverted. Hegel and 
Zeller view him as the predecessor of Anaxagoras, Lewes as his 
successor. Some view him as a follower of the Ionian school ; but 
they say he denied all sensible qualities to the elements of things : 
some consider him an Eleatic, but he admitted a multiplicity of 
prime principles: Aristotle regards him as identical in doctrine 
with Anaxagoras in the primal mixtures, 2 but Lucretius, in his 
philosophic poem De Natura Rerum, sets him as the originator of 
the Atomic theory. The combinations of the atoms are, in a true 
sense, first mixtures, this will reconcile the last two statements, and 
will besides establish a logical connection between both systems. 
However, the Stagyrite informs us that Democritus and his com- 
panion Leucippus made^ure, order and position the causes of the 
differences of entities to the neglect of inquiry into the nature of 
motion and "how it exists in entities." 3 No one will be inclined 
to deny, that the authority of the author of the Metaphysics, is 
of higher historical value than that of the Roman poet in the 
present question, so that it would seem that the Atomic Theory, 
as Lucretius expounds it, did not reach such high perfection 
in its founder Democritus, as that author asserts it did, but 
rather was the development of a later period. However this 
may be, there is a logical link between the homoeomerianism of 
Anaxagoras and the atoms of Democritus. The hornoeonieries are 

l op. cit, p. 81. 

8 op. cit., Book iii, ch. v, p. 98. *Ibid., Book i, ch. iv, p. 21. 



DEMOCBITUS. 23 

founded on the principle that only " like can act upon like." Hence 
we find Lucretius expounding Anaxagoras as saying : — 

" Gold is made of elementary gold. The same for fire and earth and all things 
else." x 

If only "like can act upon like," it would seem, considering the 
infinitely diverse interactions of things, that all things should be 
alike in one primeval substance, and that the only difference would 
be that of phenomena or of manifestation. This is the theory of 
Democritus as Aristotle puts it. Speaking of Democritus and his 
fellows he says : — - 

"They affirm that entity differs merely in rhythm, and diathege, and trope; 
out of these, the rhythm is figure and the diathege order and the trope position." 2 

) 
In this sense Lewes says "Atomism is homoeomerianism stripped / 

of qualities." 3 

The theory of knowledge of Democritus bears a logical relation 
to the tenets of Anaxagoras. When this philosopher advanced 
that all things were false, his convictions were intensified, as we 
have seen, by the dogma of Becoming of Heraclitus, so that with 
him it assumed the form of a Becoming-mixed. Seeing all things 
in motion, he considered nothing as capable of being verified, because 
immediately it ceased to be. This plunged him into the study of 
sensibles merely, to the disregard of the immutable and the perma- 
nent. The consequence was that while he taught that all things 
were false, he believed that the ever-fleeting phenomena of sense 
must needs be true. 4 Hence his apothegm in the language of the 
Stagyrite : — 

"Entities are such to men as they may have supposed them." 5 

In the same sense we find Democritus saying that " nothing is 
true," as Aristotle tells us ; but, a little lower down on the same 
page, he states that Democritus held that " the apparent according j 
to sense is necessarily true." And expounding this doctrine in the 
same passage, he affirms that Anaxogoras and Empedocles and 
Democritus maintained this opinion, because they confused sense 

1 op. cit, i, 839. 4 op. cit., Book iii, ch. iv, p. 101. 

2 op. cit., Book i, ch. iv, p. 21. 5 Ibid., p. 100. 

z op. cit., v. i, p. 99. 



24 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

and prudence or mind, and because they regarded sense as a mere 
alteration of the percipient subject. 1 

It would seem that the same men could not have held such clearly 
contradictory opinions. Their exaltation of sensible knowledge 
however offers a ready explanation. Things appear differently to 
the senses at different times, wherefore they concluded according to 
Aristotle that : — 

" Nothing the more is this true than that." 2 

That is things in themselves are indifferent to truth or falsehood, 

whether they are false or true, is to us, wrapped in nescience, but 

inasmuch as they affect the senses, or are mere alterations of the 

sense faculties, they of necessity must be true. 3 This, in an uncouth 

Vform, is the Agnosticism of to-day. 

If it be true that he denied an Infinite Mind similar to the 
Anaxagorean Personal Prime Principle, as Lucretius and modern 
agnostics affirm, 4 then must Democritus be reputed among the 
Greeks as the parent and founder of existing Agnosticism. 

§ 5. — Protagoras. 

The sensational doctrines we have expounded easily paved the 
way for the Sophists. We do not here consider the Sophists as 
vain paraders of learning, lovers of shallow, litigious logic, but 
under the aspect of a philosophical sect. The chiefs were Prota- 
goras the Abderite, a disciple of Democritus, Hippias the Eleatic, 
and the Leontine Gorgias. Let Protagoras speak for the rest : — 

" Man is the measure of all things," 

L e: — 

" Man is the criterion of that which exists; all that is perceived by him exists, 
that which is perceived by no man does not exist." 5 

This teaching is the expression of the identification of Thought 
and Sensation, for according to Sextus Empiricus in the passage 

1 Ibid., p. 99. ' Ibid., p. 99. *o P . cit., p. 99. 

4 Tyndall, The Belfast Address, in Fragments of Science, p. 475. 6 ed., New York, 
1889. 
5 Sextus Empiricus, Hypol. Pyrrhon, p. 44 ; quoted by Lewes, op. cit., p. 117. 



ARISTOTLE, THE FATHER OF MODERN REALISM. 25 

from which we have cited, it means that sense perceptions are the 
sole criteria of truth. It also signifies, in the explanation of the 
same authority, that nought exists but phenomena or sense mani- 
festations because they alone are perceived by man. The identity 
of this philosophy with that of Anaxagoras and Democritus is 
evident, it is its finished scientific expression. It is the doctrine 
which is termed in modern Agnostic language, The Relativity of All j 
Knowledge, which is another name for Agnosticism. So much is / . 
this the case, that the axioms, man is the measure of all things, — - 
whatever is perceived by him exists, etc., are enunciated verbatim now 
by Mr. Mansel and Mr. Spencer. 

We wish to emphasize this observation. An opinion prevails — -x 
and it has been seemingly promoted by Agnostic writers — that \ 
Agnosticism is a product proper of this age, the latest development I 
of human progress. Assuredly, the evolution hypothesis and the / 
Darwinian doctrine are not distinctively Agnostic positions, and 
militate neither for nor against the possibility of the cognition of 
the divine existence. It is true the Agnostic philosophers turn 
these theories, as well as all the discoveries of physical science, to 
use to establish their positions, but still it remains true, even in the 
writings of the same, that the revelations of the science of to-day 
is not the substance of Agnosticism. This substance twenty-two 
past centuries have seen and have witnessed. 

» 

§ 6.—A7'istotle, the Father of Modem Realism. 

The splendid intellects of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle assailed the 
Sophists and vanquished them. If we except the several schools 
of Greek Skepticism, no other sect flourished among the ancients 
bearing an affinity to Agnosticism. Aristotle held undivided sway, 
On ne partage point le pouvoir supreme. 

A few remarks on this great thinker, the philosopher, will not be 
inopportune. First, as to his physics. Aristotle was a physicist i 
only per accidens, he was first and last a metaphysician. I think ' 
every person will admit that there never has been a man, and most 
probably, never shall be, however supereminent he may be in 
intellect, who can dispense with the experimental science of his 
time, and wing his mental flight into the higher planes of revolu- 
tionized progress of the ages yet unborn, and see things in those 
3 




V 



26 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

ages, which his contemporaries cannot even dream of. The great 
scientific geniuses have, as a rule, made but one notable discovery ; 
this was effected at times by chance, often, after long and weary 
years of search, most often, because the age had grown up to and 
was ripe for the new point of progress. The reason is simple, the 
Physical Sciences depend on experiment and observation. If these 
are not at hand, intellect has no lamp to guide it, inquiry no path 
to follow. Aristotle's physics were not his defects but the imper- 
fections of that age. It was not an era of great natural discoveries. 
The Metaphysics of Aristotle reigned supreme up to the time 
of Lord Bacon, and they are now followed in reality, if not always 
in name, by all Realists of all schools. Of course, the ever-increas- 
ing data furnished by the progress of the Natural Sciences, make 
Metaphysics a progressive science, but the eternal principles which 
underlie Metaphysics do not change, and these principles, all will 
allow, have come to us from Aristotle. 1 

1 Note. — It is interesting to compare different opinions on the merits of Aristotle. 
Lewes the historian writes: — 

" Aristotle seems to have been the greatest intellect of antiquity, an intellect 
at once comprehensive and subtle, patient, receptive and original. . . . While 
therefore the majority will prefer Plato, who in spite of his difficulties is much 
easier to read than Aristotle, yet all must venerate the latter as a great intel- 
lectual phenomenon, to which scarcely any parallel can be suggested. . . . Here 
we have to consider him as the philosopher, who resuming in himself all the 
results of ancient speculation, so elaborated them into a co-ordinate system that 
for twenty centuries he held the world a slave." op. cit., v. i, pp. 264-5. 

Prof. Tyndall says of him : — 

" It was not, I believe, misdirection, but sheer natural incapacity which lay at 
the root of his mistakes. As a physicist, Aristotle displayed what we should con- 
sider some of the worst attributes of a modern physical investigator — indistinct- 
ness of ideas, confusion of mind, and a confident use of language which led to the 
delusive notion that he had really mastered his subject, while he had as yet really 
failed to grasp the elements of it." (The Belfast Address in op. cit., p. 485.) 

Finally : — 

" His was the proud distinction of having discovered and fully drawn out 
the laws under which the mind reasons in deductive reasoning. That in deduc- 
tion the mind proceeds from some universal proposition and how it proceeds — 
these were the first things which Aristotle had to tell the world. The modern 
attempts to impugn these principles, and to show that the mind does not reason 
from universals are a failure. They confuse inductive with deductive reasoning 
and ignore the case of a science like geometry, which is all deduction." (Sir 
Alex. Grant, Bart., L. L. D., Aristotle in Ency. Brit, v. ii, p. 516, 9 ed., New York, 
1878.) 



MODERN AGNOSTIC DOCTRINES. 27 

CHAPTER II. 
Modern Agnostic Doctrines. 

§ 7. — Bacon. 

If we disregard its antique form, Agnosticism culminated in the 
Sophists' supreme dictum, that all coguition is encircled within the 
circumference of the mind's affections, i. e. it does not transcend the 
phenomenal or subjective impressions of the Ego. For this is also 
the final word of actual Agnostic philosophy. In this their message 
to this age, the trinity of the latest apostles, Messrs. Huxley, Tyn- 
dall and Spencer are in exultant accord. In beginning therefore 
to trace the resuscitation and growth of Modern Agnosticism from 
Bacon to Mr. Spencer, we are viewing not so much a progression 
as a retrogression, not so much an onward as a backward march to 
the days when the voice of Protagoras and the others spoke to the 
cities of Greece. 

Lord Bacon, Francis of Verulam, the first distinguished departer 
from the teachings of Aristotle, conferred a lasting boon on humanity 
by taking the physical sciences out from obscurity, and putting 
them in the places of honor which were rightly theirs. His hos- 
tility to the Greek philosopher manifested itself in the title he gave 
to the second part of his wonderful work The Great Instauration: 
I refer to his Novum Organum, the Organum of Aristotle was 
undoubtedly getting too old. That this hostility should go to such 
an extent in a man of Bacon's extensive knowledge, as not to stop 
short, at what we shall characterize in mild terms, as reckless mis- 
interpretation, is marvelous even in a mean adversary. He por- 
trays Aristotle as " banishing God the fountain of final causes, and 
substituting nature in his stead," * whereas the veriest tyro in phil- 
osophy has heard of the Stagyrite's famous proof of the existence 
of God. Scarcely less marvelous is his use of the epithet Sophistic 2 
as applied to the philosophy of Aristotle. This, and similar stig- 
mata are fastened by no other opponent either ancient or modern 

1 Advancement of Learning, in Bacon's Physical and Metaphysical Works, pp. 141-2. 
Edited by Jos. Devey, M. A. (Bonn's Library), London, 1891. 
8 Novum Organum, Book i, Aphorism lxiii, in op. tit., p. 400. 



28 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

on the name of that " sublime and pathetic figure who enriched and 
ennobled " not only Greek philosophy, but the philosophies of all 
ages and climes. 1 But to pass from the men to what is more 
important, their works, it is not true that Aristotle taught the syl- 
logism to the gross neglect of induction. 2 No one more clearly 
poised the two ; a foot-note by the editor, at the bottom of the page 
from which we have just quoted, very pertinently says : — 

" In our mind we are of accord with the Stagyrite who propounds, as far as we 
can interpret, two modes of investigation, — the one by which we ascend from 
particular and singular facts to general laws and axioms, and the other by which 
we descend from universal propositions to the individual cases which they virtually 
include .... and whoever restricts logic to either process, mistakes one half of 
its province for the whole ; and if he acts upon his error, will paralyse his 
methods, and strike the noblest part of science with sterility." 

This observation applies to Bacon who says : — " our only hope 
then is in genuine induction." 3 This he states in entire repudiation 
of the syllogism. How differently Aristotle speaks in laudation of 
him who was the first and great inventor of Induction ! " For there 
are two things in science," says Aristotle, "which one might justly 
ascribe to Socrates ; now, I allude to his employment of inductive 
arguments and his definition of the universal : for both of these 
belong to a science that is conversant about a first principle." 4 

There is no one now who will follow Bacon's division of the 
sciences of Metaphysics and Physics ; to the latter he assigns all 
efficient causes, limiting the former to the formal and final causes. 5 
Whereas the teaching of the Stagyrite, which draws the dividing line 
between these sciences, from the distinction of their objects, is as 
much an authoritative dogma now as it was in the brightest days of 
the Schoolmen. " To physical or Natural sciences," he writes, 
''belongs the study of material things as far forth as they partake 
of motion" to Metaphysics, on the contrary, pertains the investigation 
of entities ' in so far ' as they are * entities ; ' % in a word — Physics is 
the science of Motion, Metaphysics the science of Being as such. 

1 G. L. Fonsegrive, Francois Bacon, pp. 80, sqq., Paris, 1893. 

3 Novum Organum, op. cit n p. 384. Conf. Abbot, The Religion of Science, p. 179, 
3 ed., Boston, 1888. 

3 op. ciL t in Novum Organum, p. 386. 4 Ibid., p. 359. 

5 Advancement of Learning, Book iii, ch. iv, p. 125, in op. cit. 

6 Melaph., Book x, ch. iv, p. 287, ed. cit. Conf. Very Eev. A. F. Hewitt, C. S. P., 
Rational Demonstration of the Being of God, in Neely's Histoi-y of the Parliament of 
Religions, p. 76, 3 ed., Chicago, 1893. 



DESCARTES. 29 

In the twelfth and eight following 'Aphorisms * of the Novum 
Organum, Bacon charges the Scholastics, the inheritors of the \ 
Aristotelian Philosophy, with confusions, ambiguities and other 
defects of method and conception. The more modern opponents of 
the schools do not seem to agree with this accusation. John Stuart 
Mill prefaces the first book of his Logic with the following quo- 
tations : — 

" La scolastique, qui produisit dans la logique, comme dans la morale et dans 
une partie de la metaphysique, line subtilitd, une precision d'idees, dont 1' habi- 
tude inconnue aux anciens, a contribue' plusqu'on ne croit an progres de la bonne 
philosophie." — Condorcet, Vie de Turgot." \ 

"To the schoolmen the vulgar languages are principally indebted for what \ 
precision and analytic subtlety they possess." — Sir VV. Hamilton, Discussions in \ 
Philosophy:' l ' 

In concluding our observations on Bacon, we would say, that 
apart from the impulse he gave to the study of the science of nature, 
his pretensions to mental sovereignty have wrought incalculable 
harm in philosophy. His vast and varied knowledge, his extra- 
ordinary endowments might have been employed " not to subdue 
all opinions, as Alexander did all nations ; and thus erect himself 
a monarchy in his own contemplation " so that in very truth it may 
be said of him what he unjustly said of Aristotle : — 

" Fcelix doctrinae praedo, non utile mundo 
Editus exemplum." 8 



§ 8. — Descartes. 

The impetus given to the Natural Sciences by the works of Bacon, 
and the sublime discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, 
infused into the European mind a new spirit of study and observa- 
tion of nature. This new impulse tended to the neglect and con- 
sequent discredit of Metaphysics. With the Reformation, the 
Protestant and infidel portion of Europe looked on the old Church 
as an effete religious civilization, and the Aristotelian philosophy, 
because of its connection with the Church's teachings, seemed an 
object of suspicion and worthy of neglect. Human nature is given 
to extremes. Even were the old Church deserving of the reproba- 

1 A System of Logic, p. 10, People's ed., London and New York, 1893. 

s Bacon's Works, op. cit., p. 124. — Note : the above quotation is from Lucan, x, 21. 



30 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

tion pronounced by the Reformers, it would not follow that the 
Scholastic philosophy deserved a similar destruction. 

The upshot of all this was that men were restless for new opinions. 
Bruno made all things God, Vanini all things matter, Campanelia 
existence thought, and thought sensation, Montaigne and Charron 
indulged in fashionable skepticism; in a word, the spirit of phil- 
osophic revolt had passed from the Protestant countries and made 
itself felt all over Europe. This revolt has been characterized as 
" the upturnings of a volcano;" the ambition of each rejecter of 
Aristotle's tenets, was to find something new to put in their place. 
This was the sixteenth century as Descartes appeared. Bacon had 
consecrated the Organum of Induction, Descartes comes to conse- 
crate the Organum of Doubt. Seeing the philosophies tossed into 
universal confusion, he thinks it safer to set aside all opinions and 
to set out alone on the voyage after truth. He says : — 

"I thought that I could not do better than resolve to sweep them" — viz.; his 
opinions—" wholly away, that I might be afterwards in a position to admit either 
others more correct, or even the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of 
Reason." 1 

He does this by betaking himself to a simulated universal doubt, 
with the saving exception of the principle, I think therefore I am, so 
that starting from this point a freeman from universal error, deceit, 
prejudice, he might build up, stone upon stone, the edifice of truth. 

Descartes, though he assumes this principle as the first founda- 
tion of all philosophy, still by a strange anomaly, rests this very 
basic principle on his clear and distinct idea, which he announces 
as the general principle on which all certitude is superimposed. 
He enunciates it as follows : whatsoever I very clearly and dis- 
tinctly conceive is true. 3 

Another anomaly at once presents itself: on the principle of the 
clear and distinct idea he finds that God exists, and, from the truth 
of God's existence, he derives the validity of the principle of the 
clear and distinct idea and of all other truths besides. 4 This piece 
of clear circular reasoning and its conjoint confusion of clashing 
basal principles do not augur well for the promised superstructure. 

1 Discourse on Method, in work The Method, Meditations and Selections from the 
Principles of Descartes, p. 14, 10 ed., Edinburgh and London, 1S90 (edited and 
translated by Veitch). 

2 Discourse on Method, op. cit., p. 33. 3 Ibid., p. 33. Conf. p. 116. 
4 Medit. v. in op. cit., pp. 148, 150- 



DESCARTES. 31 

The Universal Methodic Doubt sounds like a bugle-blast against 
the old philosophy, a war-call summoning in new forces to take 
and occupy the philosophic kingdoms; it was Descartes' way of 
introducing an intended revolutionizing philosophy. 

His clear and distinct idea is devoid of original merit, it is a 
loose form of the Peripatetic criterion of certitude, viz., objective 
evidence or the intellectual splendor of truth, revealing it to 
the eye of the intellect, analogous to the manner in which light 
and color manifest material objects to the eye of the body. The 
way Descartes derives the conception of God's existence has the 
prerogative of originality. We clearly perceive, said he, that God 
exists, this notion is too noble to spring from anything finite, where- 
fore it is immediately impressed on our minds by the Divinity. 1 
His principal proof, however, of the divine existence is : — 

" That we may validly infer the existence of God from necessary existence being 
comprised in the concept of him." 2 

This is the well known Cosmological argument first propounded 
by St. Anselm in his Proslogium cap. v, and in his Monologium 
cap. civ, and confuted by St. Thomas and the Schools. 3 

From the existence of the Divine Being he deduces the existence 
of the extra-mental world. The received doctrine that things 
external act on our senses, and thus bring us to their knowledge, 
he considers untrustworthy because of the fallaciousness of the 
senses. 4 But, he says, we clearly conceive the universe as distinct 
from God and ourselves. This clear and distinct idea does not 
come from sense. It must consequently come from God, who 
would, without question, deserve to be regarded as a deceiver, if he 
directly and of himself " presented to our mind the idea of this 
extended matter, or merely caused it to be presented to us by some 
object which possessed neither extension, figure nor motion." 5 

If there be no causal communication between us and external 
reality, how does that reality stand related to us? Descartes 
replies that " the idea of it is formed in us on occasion of objects 

1 op. cit., p. 201, in Principles of Philosophy. 
*Ibid., p. 199, and passim. 

8 S. Thomas, Summa TheoL, 1, q. 2, a. 1, ad. 2. and Cont. gent, lib. i, cap. 10 et 11, 
et De potent, quaest. vii, art. 2 ad 11. 4 op. cit., pp. 119, 120, in Meditation iii. 

5 op. cit., p. 232, in Principles of Philosophy. 



32 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

existing out of our minds." * The ideas of the universe and the 
individual concrete objects which make it up, he describes as 
adventitious. If these ideas are not caused but simply occasioned 
by experience, they must be produced by God in our minds, as often 
as objects appear before the senses, and for each individual case. 
Descartes does not state this, but it is the sole admissible hypothesis. 

But if individual percepts are not empirically derived, as the 
Scholastics and the great body of realistic philosophers, in their train, 
inform us, how will it be with generalized concepts, and the universal 
principles which underlie all human thinking? These a fortiori 
are not caused by sensuous objects, nor is it necessary to invoke the 
divine intervention as in the case of individual things, for the faculty 
itself has the innate or inborn power to produce them. Descartes does 
not tell us how the faculty produces them. The Schoolmen concede 
the same power to the human faculty, but besides they acquaint us 
with the how, viz. the mind, when it contemplates the individual 
cognitions deduced from individual objects, by its innate power 
generalizes those cognitions. Thus when I see a man, an individual 
man, I at once possess the idea of man in general, of the genus man : 
when I see that this two and two before me make this four, I at 
once come to the knowledge that all twos and twos make four. 

Descartes expounds his innate ideas in these words : — 

" For, as I have the power of conceiving what is called a thing, or a truth, or 
a thought, it seems to me that I hold this power from no other source than my 
own nature." 2 

If this exposition be correct, the common conviction that Des- 
cartes' innate ideas originated with Plato, and are different from 
and hostile to Aristotle, seems not to be borne out by fact. The 
theory is too incomplete to be hostile to anything. The real cause 
of alarm is, not his innate ideas, but his negation of the derival of 
particular concrete cognitions from causative experience. 

A sequel from this latter teaching, is the Cartesian dogma of 
Mediate or Representative Perception, as Sir W. Hamilton has called 
it. It is that " the unextended mind cannot have an immediate 
apprehension of extended reality in any manner. It can directly 
know only its own states." 3 In another form : the direct and im- 

1 Ibid., p. 233. — The Italics are mine. 

2 op. cit., in Meditation iii, p. 118. Conf. pp. 287, 288, in Notes on Innate Ideas. 
3 Maher, S. J., Psychology, p. 92, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago. 



DESCARTES. 33 

mediate object of the mind's perceptions, is its own ideas, so that by 
those ideas it cognizes the outer world or material non-ego. This 
makes the apprehension of the material world indirect and mediate, 
and the theory is termed Representationalism, as put opposite the 
tenet of immediate perception of the universe, which is denomi- 
nated Presentationalism, x 

Representationalism is the real modern starting point of modern \ 
Agnosticism. Let us see how he gets it. Material things are the \ 
sole occasions of the ideas that represent them : we know they / 
exist, not because they causally reveal themselves to us, but because / 
God is veracious. The process is : first the ideas; then the divine 
veracity; lastly, by inference, the knowledge of things. Descartes 
does not make this or any ratiocination : but he states the doctrine 
in several places. 1 

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a mental revolutionary 
spirit. The personification and human expression of that spirit 
was Descartes. He began by Doubt, and that Doubt has run like 
a stream, or rather I should have said, has rushed like a torrent, 
through all the skeptical systems, and chiefly through the several 
schools of Agnosticism. 

The I think therefore I am was enunciated first by St. Augustine 
when he said : — 

"Si enim fallor sum." 2 

Besides, both before and after him, it has been considered, not alone 
by philosophy but also by ordinary common sense, as the first fact 
and prerequisite of all thinking. It was the reduction of all cog- 
nition within the circle of this self-consciousness, it was the repudia- 
tion of the world of objects as causes or sources of cognition, it was 
the rejection of all the percipient faculties, and first of all,of the 
senses, as direct acquirers and contemplators of truth, it was this 
line of march of the I think therefore I am that was original in the 
new philosophy and characteristic of it. 

It will seem to the most casual observer that such a scheme of 
thought courteously invites every Agnostic inclination. For if the ^ 
material objects, which seem so much to affect our senses, only seem 
and do not, if the evidence of their causal connection is vanity, 

1 op. cit., Meditation, vi, p. 154. 

2 De. Civit. Dei, lib. xi, cap. 26, in P. L., t. vi, p. 339. 



34 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

will the belief that, the Deity is at hand every moment, disclosing 
to us the world, bring with it evidence of a clearer and stronger 
light? If we know nothing, except as a direct report from con- 
sciousness, or inferentially from such a report, how shall we cross 
the chasm which divides the subjective world of mind from the 
objective universe of things? The knowledge of the divine verac- 
ity, we are told, is the bridge. This implies that God exists. We 
repeat the question : how shall we know that God exists? how 
shall we cross the bridge from the mere subjective idea of God to 
its objective reality? 

Enclosure within the edifice of consciousness, more intricate and 
bewildering than the Egyptian or Cretan labyrinth, the knowledge 
of the subjective affections of the mind and nothing beyond this, 
does not seem a difficult corollary from the method and march of 
Descartes. It is its natural, its logical conclusion. 

§ 9. — Prof. Huxley on the "I think therefore I am." 

Descartes' influence on the current Agnosticism does not apj^ear 
to be of a direct and immediate nature, but rather indirect and 
mediate by way of Locke and Hume. Prof. Huxley asserts the 
contrary, and goes so far as to identify the Cartesian axiom I 
think therefore I am with agnostic phenomenalism. It is pertinent 
to weigh Prof. Huxley's reasons, not only because the true nexus 
between the Cartesian and agnostic philosophies, is a matter which 
it is our duty to establish, but also because the agnostic doctrine 
respecting this nexus presented by such an eminent pen, merits a 
hearing, and must needs shed copious light on the question. 

Prof. Huxley delivered an address to the Cambridge Young 
Men's Christian Society on Descartes' "Discourse touching the 
Method of using one's Reason rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth." 
Prof. Huxley sets out with the following statements. First, that 
the central proposition of the whole " Discourse " is the golden 
rule — give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth 
of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted." l 
Secondly, that " the enunciation of this great first commandment of 
Science consecrated Doubt. It removed doubt from the seat of 

1 Lay Sermons, Essays and Reviews, p. 281, On Descartes' Discourse, London and 
New York, 1893. 



PROF. HUXLEY ON THE "I THINK THEREFORE I AM." 35 

penance among the grievous sins to which it had long been con- 
demned .... Descartes was the first among the moderns to obey 
this commandment deliberately." 1 

The "golden rule" mentioned above, is not proper of the Car- 
tesian philosophy, it is common to all philosophies. There is no 
philosopher nor sect of philosophers but professes this "golden 
rule." Indeed it is the only rule they have in common. If this 
is doubt, Prof. Huxley, we are all doubters. Does it not seem 
rather a principal of not doubt but 'prudence f a principal of pre- 
caution not rashness, the avoidance, if we may so put it, of making 
rash judgments in philosophy ? The propositions therefore that, 
"the enunciation of this great first commandment of science con- 
secrated Doubt ; It removed doubt from the seat of penance " etc. ; 
and that "Descartes was the first among the moderns to obey this 
commandment deliberately," may be very nice poetry, they may be 
beautiful specimens of the cunning of the brilliant pen which 
Prof. Huxley knows how to use so well, but they do not seem to 
stand the gaze of a slight and cursory scrutiny. 

The peculiar form and method of the Cartesian Doubt lies, as 
we have remarked, and as Descartes himself has stated, in the 
temporary deposition of all verities, except the — " I think therefore 
I am" — and the departure from that, as the first and basic principle, 
on which to lay the superstructure of a firm philosophical science. 
The other philosophers — and I think Prof. Huxley will find him- 
self among their number if he will enter just a moment into his 
psychological conscience — have not deemed this formal and pro- 
fessional method of so-called Doubt necessary. Every true thinker 
examines the first principles of Knowledge, and, while he is in the 
act of discussing any one verity, he makes abstraction of all the 
rest. This, for all intents and purposes, reaches the proposed end 
as efficaciously as if he bade a Cartesian good-by to every other 
truth under the sun. 

I do not think Prof. Huxley will make reply that Descartes 
had the advantage of starting at the beginning, and of having thus 
disencumbered himself of any latent prejudice. We do not think 
Descartes started at the beginning as he professed to do. The 
affirmation "I think" from which Descartes made the illation 
" therefore I am," is no doubt the first fact of human experience, 

l Ibid., p. 281. 



36 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

but it is not the first principle of knowledge. If we do not pre- 
suppose and pre-admit the principle of contradiction, viz. — that it is 
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time 
and in the same circumstances — what will become of Descartes' 
prime principle and first foundation, " I think ? " Without the 
principle of contradiction, the statements I think and I don't think, 
I now am thinking, and I now am not thinking, will be in equal 
glory, the one will be as true as the other, and the Cartesian first 
principle ( I think' will fade like a fair morning dream. A man 
cannot say ( 1 think' unless in virtue of the principle of contra- 
diction ; it is implied in it, it is the very life of the statement, as it 
is the very life and prime reason of all truths, logically prior to 
them all, yet still co-existent with them, because they cannot exist 
without it. Descartes did not begin at the beginning, still, that 
beginning was taught every philosophical novice by Descartes' 
Catholic teachers, whom Prof. Huxley does not lose the opportunity 
of qualifying as doling out, except in mathematics, what " was 
devoid of real and solid value." 1 

Prof. Huxley next portrays Descartes as reasoning this wise on 
our thoughts : — " As thoughts they are real and existent and the 
cleverest deceiver cannot make them otherwise" (p. 283). And 
then, at once, without any intermediation of proof, he springs to the 
inference — " Thus thought is existence . . . existence is thought." 
This surely is not Descartes' doctrine, he admitted the existence 
of the material universe, and, in Prof. Huxley's own admission, 
opposed it to thought and spirit (p. 294). If the inference is not 
Descartes', it is plainly Prof. Huxley's. By some kind of an 
intellectual performance, the Professor seems to think that if Des- 
cartes did not philosophize in his fashion, he should have done so, 
and then by a returning mental leap and spring, he picks up his 
own conclusions and exhibits them as the progeny of the Cartesian 
principles (pp. 286-7). What makes all this more wonderful still, 
Prof. Huxley informs us, and repeats the information, that his 
mode of procedure is that followed and indicated by Descartes (p. 
287). 

If the illation " thought is existence " is not Cartesian nor prova- 
ble by Cartesian theory, even in the skilled right hand of Prof. 
Huxley, he, however, annexes a demonstration taken from the 

1 op.cit., p. 280. 



PROF. HUXLEY ON THE "I THINK THEREFORE I AM." 37 

Agnostic treasury. He writes : " so far as we are concerned, exist- 
ence is thought, all our conceptions of existence being some kind 
or other of thought " (p. 283). A word on this teaching seems in 
place, as the writer of it will insist that it is the " ultimate issue of 
Descartes' argument " (p. 286). We need not repeat nor insist that, 
in virtue of Prof. Huxley's own. admission as stated above, this is 
historically incorrect as far as Descartes' is concerned, it must there- 
fore stand or fall, as an isolated Agnostic affirmation, supported by 
the Agnostic principle which Prof. Huxley brings to its relief. 
Ci Existence is thought," he says, " all our conceptions of existence 
being some kind or other of thought." In simple terms, existence^ 
is thought because we conceive it as thought." Pace Prof. Huxley 
this is not true, we do not conceive existence as thought, but as the 
object of thought. What is more we conceive existence as inde- 
pendent of thought. Did Prof. Huxley believe that the young 
men of Cambridge existed, because during his " Address," they 
were present to his thoughts ? Were his thought and their existence 
identical ? Did he not know that they existed and sat before him, 
independently of h is or any other person's thought ? If " existence 
is thought," we must suppose that Prof. Huxley ceases to exist 
when he retires to rest every night, and resumes existence when he 
awakes in the morning. Prof. Huxley may indulge in this pleas- 
ant process of nocturnal annihilation and matutinal re-creation of 
himself, each time that he ceases to think and each time that he 
resumes his thoughts, but this is not the lot of ordinary mortals — 
* 4 which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit ? " 
Neither do we think is it the case with Descartes, who — we 
cannot repeat it too often — not only did not teach the identity of 
existence and thought, but by Prof. Huxley's own confession, 
admitted material existences as a distinct and independent classifica- 
tion from thinking existences (p. 294). But Prof. Huxley contin- 
ues, "it is proper for me to point out that we have left Descartes 
himself some way behind us " (p. 286). Very true, Descartes did 
not travel that road. He subjoins, " he stopped at the famous 
formula, ' I think, therefore I am.' " Assuredly, he stopped there, 
that is where he began. This beginning was the fundamental 
principle of Descartes' method. If you do not stop and start here 
but leave Descartes, as you say, " some way behind " you, you may 
be following some other method, but not Descartes'. Prof. Huxley 



38 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

immediately pursues, — " But a little consideration will show this, 
formula — that is ' I think, therefore I am ' — to be full of snares 
and verbal entanglements. In the first place, the ( therefore ' has 
no business there. The 'I am' is assumed in the ( I think/ 
which is simply another way of saying 'I am thinking ' and in 
the second, ' I think ' is not one simple proposition but three dis- 
tinct assertions rolled into one. The first of these is, ' something 
called I exist ; ' the second is, e something called thought exists ; ' 
and the third is, ' the thought is the result of the action of the L' 
Now it will be obvious to you, that the only one of these three 
propositions which can stand the Cartesian test of certainty is the 
second." Apart from Prof. Huxley's avowal of it, as manifested 
in the context as we quote it, it will be obvious to any one, that this 
passage is the tearing to utter shreds of the principle which Des- 
cartes set down, plain and unvarnished, as the starting point of all 
philosophy. 

Prof. Huxley continues on the same page and the following 
(286, 7). " But it is beside my purpose to dwell upon the minor 
points of the Cartesian philosophy. All I wish to put clearly 
before your minds thus far, is that Descartes, having commenced by 
declaring doubt to be a duty, found cerainty in consciousness alone ; 
and that the necessary outcome of his views is what may properly be 
termed Idealism ; namely, the doctrine that, whatever the universe 
may be, all we can know of it is the picture presented to us by 
consciousness." 

So the doctrine, " I think, therefore I am," which Descartes laid 
down as the key-note of all philosophy, is "a minor peculiarity of 
the Cartesian philosophy?" — We have given our opinion of the 
next statement namely that "Descartes having commenced by 
declaring doubt to be a duty, found certainty in consciousness 
alone." If you remember, Prof. Huxley, on page 281, called this 
the "central" proposition, "the golden rule" of Descartes' Method. 
He formulated it in this fashion — " This golden rule is — give un- 
qualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is 
so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted." As we have 
said, this "golden rule" is not proper of Descartes, but is common 
to all philosophies ; the shibboleth of all philosophic creeds, skep- 
ticism alone ruled out, is this very " golden rule." We would not 
iterate this evident assertion did not Prof. Huxley's iteration force 



LOCKE. 39 

us to do so. As to the last statement, that " the necessary outcome 
of his (Descartes') views is l Idealism/ " we need not repeat what 
we have already remarked. " Idealism," or in other words Prof. 
Huxley's Agnosticism, is not the outcome of Descartes' views as he 
himself developed them. Prof. Huxley, as we indicated, will not 
deny the historical truth of this assertion. Neither can it be the out- 
come in Prof. Huxley's mind if he gives the matter a little logical 
scrutiny. He cannot scatter to the winds of heaven the life- 
principle of Descartes' system, and then educe from its destruction 
a theory which he designates its " outcome." 

The mode of reasoning adopted by Prof. Huxley, and which we 
have been considering, is the same throughout the rest of the Essay 
on Descartes' "Discourse" In our opinion, he has not rightly in- 
terpreted, but seems, on the contrary, to have shot wide of the mark 
of the Cartesian philosophy. This seems especially so in his 
identification of Descartes' metaphysics with modern Agnostic 
metaphysical belief. The whole world knows that Descartes has 
been an important factor in the making of modern scientific 
thought. Modern scientific thought, however, and agnostic so- 
called scientific thought are not convertible terms, and Descartes 
who was a sound theist, maugre his great mistakes, had sufficient 
mental acumen not to profess a theistic metaphysics and an anti- 
theistic physics. 

§ 10. — Locke. 

As Hume, at a subsequent period, woke Kant from his " dogmatic 
slumbers " as he terms them, so Descartes aroused Locke from his 
psychological repose, in the truths the great Peripatetic intellects 
had pondered and decided upon. The Englishman's mind had a 
more empiric bent than that of his predecesssor. The First Book 
of his wonderful work is entirely taken up with the confutation of 
the Cartesian innate ideas. 1 At the same time this is not a return 
to the Schoolmen. The worn Scholastic adage read, nihil est in 
intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, attributing the senses as 
the first and immediate channels of knowledge, the gates through 
which cognition passes and is poured into the noble treasury of the 
intellect. Locke leaves this midway path and passes to the opposite 
side of the road, and while he defends experience as the causative 

1 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 1-57, new ed., London. 



40 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

font of particular concrete knowledge, he identifies sense and intellect, 
and acknowledges no cognition but the sensuous. Locke does not 
tell us his reasons for the confusion of sense and intellect. Nothing 
was and is more emphasized by the Scholastics than this distinction, 
in this, primarily, they place the essential variance between man and 
the brute creation. Descartes was so absorbed in the subjective 
study of consciousness that he considers the acts of the percipient 
faculties, indiscriminately under one category, that is as units of 
consciousness. In this way he makes volition (velle), intellection 
{intelligere), and sensation (sentire) all come under the one definition 
of thought. 1 And, a little lower down, in speaking of the conscious- 
ness of seeing or walking, he says : — 

"If I mean the sensation itself, or consciousness of seeing or walking, the 
knowledge is manifestly certain, because it is then referred to the mind which 
alone perceives or is conscious that it sees or walks." 2 

Here the confounding of sensation and consciousness or mind is 
apparent. It would appear probable therefore that unacquaintance 
with the metaphysics of the schools, and the confusion in Descartes' 
use of terms, and his consequent ambiguous doctrine of the nature 
of consciousness, together with Locke's well known empiric tenden- 
cies were the potent factors of the latter's sensationalism. This sen- 
sationalism is beyond the shadow of a doubt. All cognitions of 
external objects he calls sensation; all knowledge which the mind 
acquires by reflecting on its own operations, he names reflection. 
These two comprise all knowledge ; the latter " is very like " the 
former, he says, and " might properly enough be called internal 
sense." 3 

This sensism very properly seems to regard Substance as a mental 
fiction ; for the senses apprehend the surface only, the sensible 
qualities of things. 4 We subjoin his explanation of substance. — 
Certain companies of simple ideas go constantly together and " not 
imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we 
accustom ourselves to supply some substratum, wherein they do 
subsist, and from which they do result ; which therefore we call 
' substance.' " 5 This doctrine however is vacillating. In a later 

l op. tit., p. 197, in Principles of Philosophy. 2 Ibid., p. 197. 

3 op. tit, Book ii, ch. i, sect, iv, p. 60, and passim. Note. — The italics are mine. 

4 Ibid., Book iii, ch. xi, sect, ix, p. 360. 

5 op. tit., Book ii, ch. xxiii, sect, i, p. 208. 



LOCKE. 41 

part of the Essay, he seems to think that we do not supply the 
substratum called substance, and again in the same paragraph he 
thinks we do supply it. The first quotation is : — 

" By this ' real essence ' I mean that real constitution of any thing which is the 
foundation of all those properties that are combined in and are constantly found 
to co-exist with the nominal essence." 

Here the substratum called substance or essence is not supplied 
by us, but is the real constitution said foundation of its properties. 
A little lower down, however, we have : — 

" Indeed as to the real essences of substances we only suppose their being with- 
out precisely knowing what they are." x 

By these three quotations it is clear that Locke's doctrine of Sub- 
stance is ambiguous. The first and third passage make it a mental 
figment, the second passage endows it with objective external validity. 
The last part of the lines quoted — that we only suppose the being 
of substances " without precisely knowing what they are " — and 
the more clear cut statement that " we know them not," 2 — are the 
first modern expression of the Agnostic dogma of the unknowable- 
ness of things-in-themselves. 

Locke accepts Descartes' doctrine of Represent ationalism, pure and 
simple, if we put the differentiating clause, that he summons no divine 
help to vouch for the validity of the representation. With him, the 
ideas are of themselves, representative of extra-mental existents. 
Having made sensation and reflection the sole founts of knowledge, 
a divine intervention has no footing in his theory. This inter- 
vention gave to Descartes an apparent bond with Realism, no such 
seeming link is left to Locke. He states the doctrine this wise : — 

" Since the mind in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate 
object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate it is evident 
that our knowledge is only conversant about them." 3 

If " our knowledge is only conversant about " our ideas how do 
we cognize the outside universe ? Locke does not realize the import 
of this doctrine, he innocently assumes that there is a nexus between 
the ideas and the outer universe. The dark impending figure of 
Idealism does not seem to have disturbed his unsuspicious spirit. 

1 Book iii, ch. vi, sect, vi, pp. 358-9. 3 Book iv, ch. i, sect, i, p. 424. 

2 Book iii, ch. xi, sect, ix, p. 360. 

4 



V 



42 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 



§ 11. — Berkeley. 

Berkeley accepted pure and simple the principles of Locke, and 
at once puts the problem left unsolved by his master. Is there any 
causal intromission between the mind and external reality ? For 
if " all our knowledge is only conversant about " our ideas, where 
is the voucher that aught else exists ? How explain our cognition 
of the material universe? This cognition is unreal, hence the 
material universe is unreal, it has no objectivity outside the thinking 
subject. That is how Berkeley justly reasons from the premisses of 
Locke. 

" For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things, without 
any relation of their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their 
esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds 
or thinking things which perceive them." l 

A corollary from this teaching is Berkeley's famous definition of 
matter. It has no existence out of the mind, this is clear : it has 
no existence in the mind, as an actual perception or modification of 
the mind, or as a collection of such perceptions or modifications, 
for they are the sensible qualities of matter. The sole alternative 
left is that it be a possibility of such modifications or feelings. In 
this wise, he defines matter as " a permanent possibility of sensa- 
tions." 2 The pious bishop of Cloyne will not however extend this 
idealism to its full logical bearings, he shrinks from extending it to 
intellectual substances, for instance the human soul, the existence 
of the Infinite Being, the prospects the possibility of an immortal 
life. This remained for Hume. 

§ 12. — Hume. 

Starting from Berkeley's deduction from the principles of Locke, 
viz., that of bodies the esse is percipi, that they have no " existence 
out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them," Hume 
brings the theory to its full extension. If all our knowledge, reasons 
he, is encircled in sense, and if sense cannot discern aught but sensa- 
tions or perceptions, the esse of all things and of mind itself must 
be consimilar with the esse of bodies : — 

1 Berkeley's Works, v. i, § iii, p. 83, London, 1843 (edited by Wright). 

2 Prof. Adamson, Berkeley, Ency. Brit, v. iii, p. 508, 9 ed., New York, 187S. 



HUME. 43 

u What we call mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, 
united together by certain relations and supposed though falsely to be endowed 
with a perfect simplicity and identity." x 

This, it is clear, is the full and substantial evolution of Locke's 
sensationalism. Locke would not have wished it to come to this, 
but, as it stands, it is the crowning and substantial consummation of 
sensualistic idealism. It now remains for its author to methodize 
his doctrine. With Locke, he of course discards the distinction 
between the sensuous representation and the mental image, and 
sustains "reflection" and " vensation" as the two all-embracing 
fountains of knowledge. However, he rejects the division into 
" sensation " and " reflection," and for it substitutes " impressions" 
and " ideas" as facilitating a clearer and more scientific exposition. 
His illustrious expounder makes this exposition in the following 
statement : — 

" Under ' impressions ' he includes ' all our more lively perceptions when we 
hear, see, feel, love or will;' in other words, 'all our sensations, passions and 
emotions, a3 they make their first appearance in the soul.'. . . . 'Ideas,' on the 
other hand, ' are the faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning, or of 
antecedent ideas.' v 2 

Again, according to Locke's definition, " knowledge is the per- 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas." Hume 
tacitly accepts this definition. Prof. Huxley comments on the 
acceptance in these words : — 

"It follows that neither simple sensation, nor simple emotion, constitutes 
knowledge ; but that, when impressions of relation are added to these impressions, 
or their ideas, knowledge arises; and that all knowledge is the knowledge of 
likenesses and unlikenet-ses, co-existences and successions." 3 

Here we have Hume's theory of knowledge in a nut-shell as he 
deduced it from Locke : 1. All our perceptions, of whatever nature, 
as they make their first appearance in the soul, are classified as 
"impressions." 2. The faint images of these u impressions," as 
they exhibit themselves in the operations of thinking and reasoning, 
are categorized as " ideas," also the images of antecedent ideas. 
3. Neither of these categories however merit the name of know- 
ledge, they are elements or materials out of which knowledge is 

1 Treatise of Human Nature, Book i, p. 268, Edinburgh, 1828 (ed. of Black & 
Tail). Conf. p. 331. 

2 Huxley, Hume, p. 62, New York (Morley Series). *Ibid., p. 70. 



44 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

made. When the mind perceives the relations of "impressions" 
or " ideas," then and only then knowledge appears. Knowledge 
is the perception of the relations of similitudes and dissimilitudes, 
co-existences and successions. 

The Schoolmen denominate all sensuous perceptions, mental 
concepts, and "judgments" or the apprehensions of the likenesses 
and unlikenesses of the objects of two ideas, as knowledge. The 
last of course they consider as most perfect or completed knowledge. 
Locke, despite his own definition, accepts this classification, in so far 
as the inclusion of simple sense perceptions is concerned. Having 
divided knowledge into "intuitive" or the immediate perception 
of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, 1 and " demonstra- 
tive " or the perception of agreement or disagreement by means of 
demonstration, 2 he adds the third class referred to, viz., simple 
sensible perceptions : — " I think," he says, " we may add to the 
two former sorts of knowledge, this also, of the existence of par- 
ticular external objects, by that perception and consciousness we have 
of the actual entrance of ideas from them, and allow these three 
degrees of knowledge, viz., intuitive, demonstrative and sensitive." 3 

Whence it follows that Locke's definition of knowledge is obscure, 
and that Hume did not understand him. But a more important 
point, the important point, and the crux and confusion of sensation- 
alism, is the explanation of perceptions of relation. The question 
formulates itself into — how does the mind perceive, whence come 
the perceptions of relation, of likenesses and unlikenesses, co-exist- 
ence and succession, cause and effect? If Hume solves this ques- 
tion, he puts to shame his adversaries, this is the issue. 

Prof. Huxley begins his observations on Hume's views on this 
matter, by conceding that "the ultimate analysis of the "contents 
of the mind turns upon that of impressions," and that " whatever 
we discover in the mind beyond these elementary states of con- 
sciousness, results from the combinations and the metamorphoses 
which they undergo." 4 

Perceptions of relation, accordingly, we must expect to find treated 
either as impressions, or particular combinations of those impressions, 
or certain forms of their metamorphoses. But what do we find? 
We find Hume avowing that they are the mysterious inexplicable, 

1 op. cit., Book iv, chap, ii, sect. 1, p. 433. 3 Ibid., sect. 14, p. 439. 

2 Ibid., sect. 2, p. 434. 4 Hume, pp. 63, 64, op. cit. 



HUME. 45 

the problem in front of which sensationalism must confess itself 
helpless. " Original qualities of human nature " (he designates 
them) " which I pretend not to explain." l 

In the same paragraph he says that " these qualities/' (namely 
relations) " produce an association among ideas," that "they are the 
principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas," that they 
exercise a kind of attraction among ideas ; and in the very same 
part, he calls them "complex ideas," regardless of the clash of 
epithets. His admirer Prof. Huxley will surely be unbiased, yet 
nothing more vividly than the Professor's words will picture his 
master's failure : — 

"To the reader of Hume," he writes, " whose conceptions are usually so clear, 
definite and consistent, it is as unsatisfactory as it is surprising to meet with so 
much questionable and obscure phraseology in a small space. One and the same 
thing, for example, resemblance, is first called a ' quality of an idea/ and secondly 
a 'complex idea.' Surely it cannot be both. Ideas which have the qualities of 
' resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect,' are said to ' attract one another ' 
(save the mark!) and so become associated; though in a subsequent part of the 
Treatise, Hume's great effort is to prove that the relation of cause and effect is a 
particular case of the process of association ; that is to say, is a result of the pro- 
cess of which it is supposed to be the cause. Moreover, since, as Hume is never 
weary of reminding his readers, there is nothing in ideas save copies of impres- 
sions, the qualities of resemblance, contiguity and so on, in the idea, must have 
existed in the impression of which that idea is a copy ; and therefore they must 
be either sensations or emotions — from both of which classes they are excluded." 2 

This is a strong arraignment. If more vigorous terms are 
desired, the following sentence meets the demand : — 

" When he " (Hume) " discusses relations, he falls into a chaos of confusion 
and self-contradiction." 3 

Prof. Huxley is of opinion, however, despite the failure of 
Hume, that perceptions of relation find an adequate explanation 
in sensualistic Agnosticism. This explanation he attempts to 
supply. It is this : relations are simply " a kind of impressions of 
impressions." 4 Very good, but we would like to see the obvious 
difficulty explained, viz., if they are " impressions of impressions," 
must they not be copies of those impressions, and as such bear a 
similitude to them ? It would seem so, but Prof. Huxley tells us 
that they are " devoid of the slightest resemblance to the other 

1 Treatise of Human Nature, Book i, sect, iv, p. 29, op. cit. 

3 Hume, p. 68. 3 Hume, op. cit., p. 67. 4 Ibid. 



46 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

impressions," though " they are, in a manner, generated by them." l 
This leaves the whole affair in mystery and despair, and the 
doctrine of the Stagyrite and his followers remains unanswered, 
viz., that sense cannot perceive relations, because all relations — 
whether of likeness or unlikeness, co-existence or succession or 
whatever else they be — imply comparison, and the act of compar- 
ing requires a supra-sensuous faculty. Perceptions of relations, 
therefore, which constitute all distinctively human knowledge, and 
without which there is no ratiocination, no science, no philosophy, 
seems to be not a mere hiatus in the sensism of Hume, but an 
argument and a fact against its very existence. This will appear 
more strongly so, as no follower of Hume, even down to Prof. 
Huxley, has advauced any explanation of this most important 
point which is less open to objection than the explanation of 
the philosopher of Ninewells. 

A most logical feature in the Hume sensationalism is the rejec- 
tion of the principle of causality. The causal nexus is not a fact 
of experience.- Sense-perception is restricted to sole phenomena, 
these present themselves as ever succeeding one another, but the 
link which binds them and which establishes a causal communica- 
tion and dependence is not revealed to the senses. This Hume saw, 
and in the repudiation of the principle of causation he brought the 
empiricism of Locke to its full growth and flower. Pure sensa- 
tionalism, thorough idealism, both brought to their full conclusions 
and most logical completeness, this is the doctrine of Hume. Arid 
this doctrine is identical with the empiric Agnosticism of to-day. 
One distinction exists between them, if distinction it may be called 
in other than a nominal sense, it is this : Hume is positive and 
affirmative in his teachings : Empiric Agnosticism proposes the 
very same teachings but in an indirect and negative form. For 
instance Hume defines mind as " nothing but a heap or collection 
of different perceptions." On this definition Prof. Huxley com- 
ments as follows, with a true Agnostic ring : — 

" With this ' nothing but,' however, he obviously falls into the primal and 
perennial error of philosophical speculators — dogmatising from negative argu- 
ments. He may be right or wrong ; but the most he, or anybody else, can prove 
in favor of his conclusion is, that we know nothing more of the mind than that it 
is a series of perceptions." 2 

1 Ibid. a Hume, p. 61, op. cit. 



KANT. 47 

The thoroughness of Hume's Empiric Agnosticism, in so far as 
the substance of his teaching goes, the following words of a well 
known writer attest : — 

" As fat- as metaphysics is considered, Hume has given the final word of the 
Empirical school. It is no exaggeration to say that the more recent English 
school of philosophy represented by J. S. Mill, has made in theory no advance 
beyond Hume." * 

Again : — 

"Hume is the recognized prophet of the new dispensation which finds so many 
representatives in the science and the literature of the day ; which hold that 
respecting the greatest, problems and ultimate issues of human life, we have no 
means of arriving at any conclusions." 2 

Finally, Prof. Huxley : — 

" Hume shows himself the spiritual child and continuator of the 
Locke " and " he appears no less plainly as the parent of Kant and as the 
gonist of that more modern way of thinking, which has been called Agnost 

Hume, as we have declared, could find no place for the Principle 
of Causation in Empiricism. The easiest way was to ignore and 
repudiate it. Perceptions of Relations, however, he could not ignore, 
he could not deny their existence, as in his view they make up the 
whole province of knowledge. So, as we have said, he confesses 
his helplessness to give any account of them. 

§ 13.— Kant. 

Hume was satisfied with mere sense-percepts as the total sum of 
scientific philosophy. But Kant's mind is of an entirely different 
make-up. With him no philosophy is possible, unless it gives a 
full and satisfactory interpretation of the perceptions of relation, and 
of all those universal principles and laws built on and dependent 
on those relations ; all which principles and laws, as necessary and 
eternal axioms, Hume challenged as having no warranty from 
sensuous perception. No wonder, then, we find Kant's suspicions 
aroused as he reads Hume's discardure of the causal principle. 4 
He declares : — 

1 Adarason, Hume, Ency. Brit., vol. xii, p. 355, op. tit. 

2 Diman, The Theistic Argument, p. 10, Boston, 1881. 

3 Hume, p. 58. 

4 JR. P. Pesch, S. J., Kant et la Science Moderne, p. 48 (traduit de 1' Allemand), Paris. 



work of 
e prota- 
icism." 3 / 




48 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

" I first tried whether Hume's observation could not be made general and soon 
found that the conception of cause and effect was not by a long way the only one 
by which the mind cogitates a priori, but that metaphysics consist entirely of such." 

And again : — 

" Thus metaphysics, according to the proper aim of the science consists «merely 
of synthetical judgments a priori" 1 

What are these conceptions or judgments of which " metaphysics 
entirely consist ? " With the Scholastic thinkers, Kant teaches that 
there are judgments in which, the concept of the predicate is found, 
by analysis, to be contained in that of the subject. These judgments 
are consequently termed Analytic, they also bear the name a priori, 
as they are prior to all particular experience. On the other hand, 
other judgments are derivable from experience alone, hence the desig- 
nation a posteriori or posterior to experience, Synthetic because the 
mind envisaging the particular fact which it pronounces upon, sees 
that de facto the predicate is extrinsically superadded to the subject. 2 
This classification would seem complete. No tertium quid seems 
possible. Whatever phenomenalists may theorize about un'versal 
and necessary truth and its experiential conditions, they with all 
schools, idealists as well as intuitionists, until the advent of Kant, 
harmoniously agreed that analysis and mental intuition of empirical 
facts constitute the two sole processes of judgments of the thinking 
facidty. Never was it dreamed that the mind clothes the object in 
forms of its own. This is the gospel of the Kantian philosophy ; 
the following is its history. 

On examination of the judgments of the mind, Kant finds that 
he cannot class some of them according to the old division. Some 
there are which are synthetic and yet not a posteriori, on the contrary, 
they are as strictly universal and anterior to all experience as analy- 
tical judgments are. These he names Synthetic Judgments a priori. 3 
For instance, that the straight line is the shortest between two points, 
is a synthetic proposition; my conception of straightness contains 
nothing respecting length but only a quality. To effect the syn- 
thesis, the aid of the mental forms which he names intuition and 
thought, must be called in. The universality therefore and meta- 

1 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 12, Introduction (Bonn's ed., Meiklejohn's trans.), 
London, 1890. 

2 op. cit., p. 7, Introduction to Prolegomena. 3 op. cit., p. 9, and passim. 



KANT. 49 

physical necessity, which belong to these judgments, come to them, 
not from any property of the subject postulating such a predicate, 
{is in purely analytical judgments, nor from the existence of any 
experienced fact, as is the case in purely synthetical judgments, 
but from the subjective forms in which the mental faculty out of 
its own substance invests them. In a more finished and generalized 
form, the theory is, man brings to the materials of knowledge which 
he acquires by the senses, certain pure forms of knowledge, which 
his mind creates in itself, independently of all experience, and into 
which the mind fits all given material. In other words, the senses 
supply the material, the mind furnishes the forms of knowledge. 
The material are the phenomena which present themselves by the 
senses ; the forms fashioned by the faculty are of two kinds, the 
Forms of Intuition and the Forms of Thought The forms of the 
former are Space and. Time, 1 those of the latter, are the Twelve Cate- 
gories or original conceptions of the Understanding, in which all the 
forms of our judgments are conditioned, i. e. Unity, Plurality, 
Totality, — Reality, Negation, Limitation, — Substantiality, Causality, 
Reciprocal Action, — Possibility, existence, Necessity? 

These categories are purely mental evolutions, necessarily sub- 
jective or bereft of all objectivity. Objects as they are in themselves, 
are neither one nor many, for unity and plurality are forms of 
thought ; they are not realities, nor substances nor causes, no nor 
even existences, nor possibilities, all these are forms of the thinking 
subject, and as the mind has no perceptions but these forms, the 
thing -in-itself, the noumenon is and must forever remain unknowable 
and unknown to the rational faculty. But the forms themselves, 
phenomena are evidently apprehensible by the faculty, i. e., they 
are knowable and the sole objects of human knowledge : — 

"It remains completely unknown to us what objects may be in themselves and 
apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of 
perceiving them." 3 

This demarcation of the noumena from the phenomena, gives a 
solution to the contradictions which seem to be in the first princi- 
ples of thought, and which Kant calls Antinomies. For instance 
he puts his first antinomy in this wise : Thesis, the world had a 

1 op. city Transcendental Aesthetic, p. 23, Cf. p. 33, and passim. 
2 Ibid., Transcendental Logic, p. 64, and sqq. 
3 op. cit., Transcendental Aesthetic, p. 37. 



50 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

beginning in time, and has limits in space. Antithesis, the world 
had no beginning and has no limits in space. The thesis is true 
of the phenomenal world, the antithesis of the noumenal world ; 
this solves the antinomy. 1 The salutary warning given us by the 
antinomies is, not to seek to know the Absolute or Noumenal, but 
to remain satisfied within the sphere of the Empirical or Phe- 
nomenal; this being the sole and the competent object of knowledge 
is free from antinomy or contradiction. The soul, the world and 
God, i. e., the respective objects of the sciences of Rational Psy- 
chology, Rational Cosmology, and Rational Theology transcend 
the limits of sensible experience and of all experience, as they are 
known to us only in their manifestations. They are the adequate 
sum of all objects that we can conceive, and, as they transcend all 
phenomena, the philosopher of Konigsberg styles his metaphysic 
Transcendental Philosophy, Transcendental Idealism, Criticism, 
because it denies the possibility of all transcendental or metem- 
pirical knowledge. 

Rational Psychology, Rational Cosmology, Rational Theology 
have no objects corresponding to them in nature, they are beyond 
the pale of all possible cognition. Of what use are they ? None 
whatsoever, except in so much as we know that they cannot be 
known. 2 Phenomena alone, we iterate it, are known, and not 
known in the true sense of the word. They have no objective 
validity, unless we divest them of the forms of space and time, 
unity, plurality, existence ; and then they are as much noumena, as 
the transcendental ideas. Phenomena accordingly are known, but 
they are known only as mere perceptions, impressions, modifications, 
educed from the perceiving Ego, without existence, possibility, or 
anything else real; educed from the perceiving Ego, itself as 
unexistent, non-possible, unreal as the perceived object, yes, iden- 
tical with it. 

s This philosophic system is the first to give the explicit form, of 
which it vaunts itself, to Agnosticism, i. e., it is the first to define 
ex cathedra the limitations of the human reason, to tell us that so 
much we know, beyond this we are not competent to pronounce 
judgment. Protagoras and Hume said we know only the phe- 
nomenal and there is naught else to be known, meaning thereby 

1 Ibid., Transcendental Dialectic, p. 266, sq. 

s Prof. R. Adamson, Kant, Ency. Brit., vol. xiii, p. 853, op. ciL 



HAMILTON AND MANSEL. 51 

that that was all that concerned them. They did not*trouble them- 
selves, what perchance, other hypothetical orders of intelligences, 
in other hypothetical worlds, could or could not possibly cognize. 
They are at one with Kant as to the substance of the doctrine, 
their mode of expression is different. This mode of expression, 
this image and inscription coined in the brain of the theorist of 
Konigsberg, is what differentiates the modern from the old form of 
Phenomenism terminating in Hume, i. e., this image stamped on the 
antecedent substance, is the new, or rather makes it the new Agnos- 
ticism. Kantism, as a first form of the modern Agnostic doctrine, 
may be defined as that theory which confines all human cognition 
within the circle of the sole phenomenon, because of the necessary 
limitation of the human intellect, and because of its incompetence 
to transcend whatever passes the sphere of experience. The phe- 
nomenal object is of such a character that the faculty in cognizing 
it, cognizes solely what is evolved out of itself, cognizes solely 
mental or subjective forms, thus making the real object or thing- 
in-itself (the ding-an-sich) forever unknowable and unknown. 

§ 14. — Hamilton and Mansel. 

Sir W. Hamilton did not sympathize with the structure of Kant's 
transcendentalism, yet he was deeply impressed with his principle 
of the empiric limitation of knowledge. He believes in the inscru- 
tableness of the Absolute, not because the faculty contemplates its 
own self-educed forms of thought as object, and is thus shut off 
from the noumenal universe, but, on the contrary, because the Infinite 
presents itself as a mere negation, the negation of the finite. This 
banishes the infinite God from the region of knowledge, He is to be 
retained however, if not consistently at least piously, in the domain 
of belief. He writes : — 

"We must believe in the infinity of God, but the infinite God cannot by us in 
the present limitation of our faculties, he comprehended or conceived." * 

While Sir W. Hamilton maintains, as his predecessors had done, 
the Relativity or phenomenal feature of human cognition, still he 
emphasizes it, in the double sense, that the sole empiric is commen- 
surate with knowledge, and that there exists an inscrutable Abso- 

1 Led. on Metaph. and Logic, vol. ii, p. 374, Boston, 1859. 



52 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

lute. He asseverates — and so does Mr. Spencer in his sequel — that 
this theory is not new but of ancient date. They both glory in the 
fact, and even make out of it an Agnostic argument. Whatever 
may be said of the argument, the genuineness of the fact remains 
indubitable, as we have remarked repeatedly. With the Konigsberg 
philosopher, the antinomies are not basic points of doctrine, but 
facile corollaries ; with the Edinburg thinker, they rank among the 
cardinal principles. Sir William conceives that all knowledge lies 
between " opposite poles of thought ; " these opposite poles of 
thought, are mutually contradictory propositions, they are the anti- 
nomies. The mind is entangled and lost in their contradictoriness, 
still reason is shown in them weak but not fallacious. They are 
the counter-imbecilities of reason, 1 not objects of thought, but the 
boundary fields of all knowledge ; this dissipates the three sciences 
of Ego, the World and God, in a manner different but equally 
destructive, with Kant's mind-forms, and reduces them to systematic 
nescience. On this point and on the whole Hamiltonian Agnos- 
ticism, we shall speak fully, when we enter on the examination of 
Mr. Spencer's Religion. 

Dean Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious 
Thought, presented in a more popular form and specifically under 
the religious aspect, his master Sir W. Hamilton's agnostic attitude. 
The measure of his success Dr. Gerhardt's statement in the April 
number of the Mercersburg Review for 1860 energetically tells : — 

" The Limits of Religious Thought is a blind surrender of Christian Faith to 
infidelity." 

§ 15.— Comte. 

While these philosophers are striving in England to retain the 
Deity to belief, the hard logic of their principles notwithstanding, 
the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte is produced in France, 
and dispenses with the Divinity in the most radical fashion. 2 

a Martineau, Essays, Reviews and Addresses, v. iii, p. 472-3, London, 1S91. 

2 The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (trans, by Harriet Martineau), p. 26, 
Chicago, New York, San Francisco. Conf. R. P. Gruber, Auguste Comte, Sa Vie, 
Sa Doctrine, pp. 227, sqq., Paris, 1892, and Le Positivism depuis Comte ju-squ'd nos 
jours by same Author ; Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, The Scientific 
Aspects of Positivism, pp. 129 sqq., ed. quoted ; Whewell, Comte and Positivism, 
Macmillan's Magazine, March, 1866. 



COMTE. 53 

Sensuous objects are the sole knowable, all that is supersensuous, 
essences and causes, are vain and futile to human research. The 
French philosopher seems to have drunk in not alone the doctrine, 
but the spirit and style of thought of the Sophists, more deeply than 
his contemporaneous or even subsequent English co-phenomenists. 
Let the atoms of Democritus alone, said the Sophist professors to 
their disciples ; the inquiry is loss of time. And so they busied 
themselves about Politics and Rhetoric. Instead of these arts, the 
creator of Positivism, when he had set aside all the objects of 
useless metaphysics, found the scrutiny of pure phenomena as more 
congenial and more philosophic. 

His Three Stages of Knowledge, his Religion of Humanity— 
which Prof. Huxley felicitously pronounced " Catholicism minus 
Christianity " — it would not be relevant here to dwell upon. In 
brief, the Positive Philosophy as it came from the mind of Comte, 
has some small influence in his own country but none outside of it. 
Separated from its Positive Religion and other distinctive forms, 
and viewed specifically as the phenomenal theory of knowledge, 
which disallows all metaphysical investigation, it found some favor 
with the English mind. 1 The word " Positivist" was widely known 
and used in England when the term " Agnostic " was yet in its 
infancy ; Messrs. Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and before them Mr. 
Geo. H. Lewes had to be classed, and seemed to fit in under the 
classification of Positivists. They, however, resented the appella- 
tion, and Mr. Spencer, to define distinctly his attitude, took the 
pains to write the essay in his Recent Discussions, which is entitled 
Reasons for dissenting from tJie Philosophy of Comte. Mr. J. S. 
Mill, however, who is in the same class with these philosophers, 
did not object to the name. Messrs. Harrison and Cosgrove, Dr. 
Bridges and the late Prof. Clifford like the name of Positivist ; I 
suppose they regard the title of Agnostic as of too negative a 
nature. Agnosticism, as set off against Positivism, may be described 
as the phenomenal theory plus metaphysics or an attempt at it ; 
conversely, Positivism, put opposite Agnosticism, is the phenomenal 
theory minus metaphysics. 

This is the only philosophic system, which does not make at least 
an attempt at Metaphysics, which does not make at least an attempt 

1 Flint, AnU-theistic Theories, p. 505, Edinburgh and London, 1885. 



54 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

to solve the triple mystery, Man, the World, God. For these 
reasons it does not seem probable that it has come to take a perma- 
nent abode among the philosophies. 1 

§ 16.— Mill 

Of modern English Agnostic Thinkers Mr. J. S. Mill has the 
nearest philosophic kinship with M. Cornte, yet his inclinations are 
too metaphysically acute, not to seek to enter somewhat behind the 
veil of the phenomenon. But he is first and last the nineteenth 
century Hume. A host of passages might be cited, the following 
may be sufficient to exhibit their philosophic identity : — 

" The idealist metaphysicians are now very generally considered to have made 
out their case, viz., that all we know of objects is the sensations which they give us 
and the order of the occurrence of those sensations." 2 

He iterates Berkeley's definition of matter, Hume's description 
of mind, and Hamilton's circumscription of all cognition to the 
"phenomenal, phenomenal of the unknown." 3 He denies the 
existence of causality or power, in every true sense of that word, 
however much he may retain the name. Starting from these funda- 
mental principles, he proposes to himself, as the scope of his philo- 
sophic disquisitions, to vindicate and set forth in a more finished 
fashion than did Hume, the scientific and psychologic character of 
his master's idealist empiricism. Hume's Associationism, trans- 
mitted to him through Hartley, Priestley, Brown and his father 
James Mill, he makes the keystone of his psychology. 4 This of 
course is logical in a sensuous philosophy and it is true to its prin- 
ciples. He is equally consistent in laying a scientific basis. There 
are no abstract, universal and necessary, that is there are no a priori 
concepts in sensism. Science however does not seem to be able to 
get along without them. But this does not deter the author of the 
famous Logic. He calmly dismisses the syllogism as a petitio prin- 

'Crozier, The Religion of the Future, pp. viii and ix, Preface, London, 18S0. 
Conf. M. Laugel, Les Premiers Principes de 31. H Spencer, Rtvue des Deux Mondes, 
Feb. 15, 1874. *op. cit., Book i, ch. iii, sect. 7, p. 3S. 

3 Ibid., p. 39, Conf., Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, ch. ii, p. 24o, 
(by J. S. Mill), New York, 1S84, and Calderwood, Bain, Mill and Jouffroy, London 
Quart. Rev., n. 81, art. 5, 1873, (author anonym.). 

4 Logic, Book i, ch. iii, sect. 9, p. 41, op. cit. 



MILL. 55 

cipii, 1 induction by simple enumeration is put in its place ; by this he 
reasons from the uniformity of facts to universal laws. These 
universal or general laws embrace all physical, metaphysical and 
mathematical judgments, if such they can be called, but their 
universality, unlike the a priori metaphysics, is not based on any 
inherent ontological necessity because the contradictory propositions 
are not impossible, but because they are to the constitution of the 
human intellect, inconceivable. 2 

But how can induction by simple enumeration deduce from the 
mere uniformity of past experience, those universal laws, those ever- 
lasting necessary principles, which are the key-stone of Science 
and of Philosophy ? Mr. Mill answers this important question as 
follows : — hitherto the invariableness of these laws has been empiri- 
cally verified, and custom has engendered in us the conviction that 
the same order shall continue to obtain. If it be asked, on what 
right and title, a persuasion founded on mere custom or repeated 
past experiences, can claim such sweeping mental assent, and ask to 
be postulated as the prime condition and natural foundation of all 
scientific truth ? how will the past speak for and verify the future, 
when there is no causal knot to tie them in the fate of inexorable 
necessity? will a uniform sequence of causally unconnected, inde- 
pendent facts, guarantee a similar succession in the future ? or does 
the contrary of such a procession appear to the intellect as incon- 
ceivable ? To meet these questions a scrutiny of the genesis of the 
conviction is necessary, and thus the question is turned over to its 
psychological issue. Mr. Mill solves this riddle — as he has solved 
to his own satisfaction every vexed psychological problem — by the 
principle of the association of ideas ; for instance the hard fact of 
memory, the equally hard existence of moral judgments and feel- 
ings, and hardest of all, the irresistible belief in the objective outness 
and existence of the universe of things, yield with equal facility 
and ease to the potent influence of associationism. 3 / 

This great thinker has certainly presented the association — 
psychological view and the logical scientific message of his master, 
with all the ability and marvelous power of which he was capable. 
And as such, the teachings of Mr. Mill, viewed as a third form of the 
Agnostic gospel, is the extreme idealist sensism of Hume elaborated 

1 Logic, Book ii, p. 119. 2 Ibid., p. 173. 

3 Exam, of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, op. tit, ch. ii, pp. 12, 13 and passim. 



56 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

and put into touch with the time, by its most potent modern repre- 
sentative. 

§ 17. — The Modern Physical Science Agnostics. — Huxley. 

A new phase of Agnosticism — its present form — opens with the 
I successors of Mr. Mill, I speak of the school of the present Physical 
\^ Science Agnostics. Magnificent has been the march of the Physical 
Sciences in this age, splendid and stupendous the achievements of 
their progress. This progress ennobles and elevates civilized man 
as such, and the civilized communities of our race are debtors to 
science and scientists for the elevation. All will concede, however, 
who will take an impartial view of the matter, that the province 
of the Physical Sciences is the study or knowledge of the qualities 
and laws of material nature. The sensible, external, corporeal 
world is its sphere, and that inasmuch as it is subject to the test 
and observation of the outer senses. All impartial people will 
I likewise concede that the physical sciences are not all the sciences. 
There is a science of Morals, a science of Metaphysics, a science 
1 of Psychology ; verily these are not branches or subdivisions of 
Y Physics. In the face of these a, b, c, facts, assuredly, nothing less 
than mental intoxication, so to speak, superinduced by the grandeur 
of their triumphs in the study of nature, could have led some 
scientists to speak as they do. " I have swept the heavens with 
my telescope," said Lelande, "and have not found a God." "We 
have examined the brain with our microscope," say others, a and 
have not found a soul." l To look for God with a telescope, or 
search for the soul with a microscope, is just as wise as to try to sing 
with one's hand or to speak with one's ear. The telescope and micro- 
scope discern not all things, nor shall physical instruments find the 
glories of what is above them. Will a telescope or microscope de- 
tect a sensation ? What spectroscope shall reveal the many colors 
of an emotion ? Physical Science and every other Science teaches 
that if we look for anything, we have to do so with the proper 
instrument, the instrument which discovers the Deity is mind. 

Professor Huxley and the late Professor Tyndall have been accused 
of this charge of claiming universal empire for Physical Science. 
In this spirit the Duke of Argyle rebukes Professor Huxley : — 

1 Momerie, op. cit, pp. 26, 27. 



HUXLEY. 57 

" The first of these " (points) " concerns the use which Professor Huxley makes 
of the word science" he writes. " In common parlance this word is now very 
much confined to the physical sciences, some of which may be called experimental 
sciences, such as chemistry, and other exact sciences, such as astronomy. But 
Professor Huxley evidently uses it in that wider sense in which it includes 
Metaphysics and Philosophy. Under cover of this wide sweep of his net, he 
assumes to speak with the special authority of a scientific expert upon questions 
respecting which no such authority exists either in himself or in any one else. 
It seems to be on the strength of this assumption that he designates a pseudo 
science any opinion or teaching or belief, different from his own." l 

Professor Huxley's claims for the sovereignty of science as he 
interprets it, his own words will best tell : — 

" The progress of science means the extension of the province of what we call 
matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions 
of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity." 2 

If this is the province of science, Prof. Huxley will, no doubt, be \ 
good enough to consider Newton, La Place, Brewster, Faraday and 
Farbes, Graham, Rowan, Hamilton, Herschel and Talbot ; or at 
the present time, Andrews, Joule, Clerk-Maxwell, Balfour, Stewart, 
Stokes and William Thomson as non-scientists, or perhaps nescien- 
tists. All these admit "spirit and spontaneity," and — as Mr. Tait 
remarked in his reply to Mr. Froude — the former were among or 
are considered to have been among, if Prof. Huxley will permit 
me to say it, the greatest scientific thinkers, and the latter are 
reckoned among the ablest British scientific minds of the day. But 
it is well to remember that Professor Huxley is also the author of 
this statement: — 

" It is an indisputable truth that what we call the material world is only known 
to us under the forms of the ideal world, and as Descartes tells us, our knowledge 
of the soul is more intimate and certain than our knowledge of the body." 3 

That is, the progress of knowledge means the extension of the 
province of what we call mind and soul, and the complete banish- 
ment from all regions of human thought, of what we call the 
material world. The former statement is materialistic and brings 
all things under " the extension of the province" of " matter," the 
latter is idealistic and makes all things citizens of the republic of 

1 Science Falsely so Called, A Reply, Nineteenth Century, May, 1887. Conf. same 
writer, Lord Bacon versus Professor Huxley, Nineteenth Century, Dec, 1894. 

2 The Physical Basis of Life, in op. cit., p. 123. 

3 On Descartes' Discourse in op. cit, p. 298. 

5 



58 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

spirit and of mind. 1 We are at a loss how to classify the author 
of these two statements, all that can be said is that in the latter he 
ranks as an idealist, in the former he is a professed materialist, 
however much he may resent the odium of the name. We have 
looked for light for the antagonism which Professor Huxley has 
seemed to put within himself; neither idealism nor materialism 
would seem to be his attitude, but an intellectual suspense between 
the two. In his interpretation of the view of Hume on the nature 
of mind, he identifies himself with the latter and reflects the image 
of his opinion in the following words : — 

" ' For any demonstration that can be given to the contrary effect, the collection 
of perceptions' which makes up our consciousness may be an orderly phantasma- 
goria generated by the Ego, unfolding its successive scenes on the background of 
the aby^s of nothingness. . . . On the other hand, it must no less readily be allowed 
that, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, there may be a real some- 
thing which is the cause of all our impressions; that sensations, though not like- 
nesses, are symbols of that something ; and that the part of that something which 
we call the nervous system is an apparatus for supplying us with a sort of algebra of 
fact, based on those symbols. A brain may be the machinery by which the material 
universe becomes conscious of itself." a 

Thus far is clear, perchance the Ego is a Fichtean world-generator, 
and the universe of things its product, as it evolves and unfolds 
itself in the phenomena of consciousness. Obversely, perchance 
the material universe may possess a real independent existence, may 
be conscious of itself through the medium of a manifold machinery 
of the brain, i. e., the purest form of idealism and the antithetical 
anthropomorphous materialistic position, are in Professor Huxley's 
eyes, hypotheses of equal value and merit. All this is very plain, 
but what follows throws it all into a muddle. He adds : — 

"The more completely the materialistic position is admitted, the easier it is to 
show that the idealistic position is unassailable, if the idealist confines himself 
within the limits of positive knowledge." 

Professor Huxley has not added an explanation of this paradox, 
so that, in ultimate analysis, his position presents itself at one and 
the same time as bold, materialistic realism and as pure idealism, 
the harmonious coalition of the two supreme extremes. 

1 W. S. Lilly, The Province of Physics, a Rejoinder to Prof. Huxley in Appendix 
to the work On Right and Wrong, p. 253, 2 ed., London, 1S91. 
8 Hume, pp. 79-80. 



TYNDALL. 59 

There is one thing, however, on which Professor Huxley ex- 
presses no protean view ; no other Agnostic writer has drawn the 
logical conclusions of Agnosticism with respect to Religion and 
Morality as he has drawn them. He says : — 

"If it" (religion) "means, as I think it ought to mean, simply the reverence 
and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to realize that ideal in life, which 
every man ought to feel — then I say agnosticism has no more to do with it than 
it has to do with music and painting." l 



§ 18.— Tyndall 

Professor Tyndall, the second brilliant form among the three 
great leaders of the sect of modern physical-science agnostics, is 
at one with Professor Huxley on the pretensions of physical science 
from the agnostic standpoint ; 2 also on the evolution of life from 
the potency of matter, 3 and on the phenomenal nature of all 
knowledge. 4 With reference to his materialism the same darkness 
shrouds his statements that shrouded the statements of Professor 
Huxley. On the one hand he tells us that he discerns in Matter 
" the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life," 5 " and that the 
nebulae and the solar system, life included, stand to each other in 
the relation of the germ to the finished organism ;" 6 while on the 
other he affirms with Du Bois-Reymond that " the passage from 
the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness 
is unthinkable," and that he does not think that the materialist 
"is entitled to say that his molecular groupings, and motions, ex- 
plain every thing. In reality they explain nothing." 7 

Professor Tyndall urges the concept of causality or power in its 
true scholastic sense. This is a deflection from the tenets of Hume 
and Mill in whose camp Professor Huxley is. But, though the 
departure be inconsistent with his sensism, still he has Mr. Spencer 
with him. Neither Professor Balfour Stewart nor Professor Clerk- 
Maxwell nor any other among the authors of our actual scientific 

1 Agnosticism and Christianity, Nineteenth Century, June, 1889. 
8 Apology for the Belfast Address, in op. cit., pp. 547-8. 

3 The Belfast Address, in op. cit, p. 526. 

4 Ibid. , loc. cit. 
b Ibid., p. 524. 

6 Ibid., Apology for the Belfast Address, p. 548. 

7 Ibid., Scientific Materialism, pp. 420-1. 



60 HISTORY OF AGNOSTICISM. 

books, have emphasized the necessity of true causality as a scientific 
factor, more than Professor Tyndall has done. In his critique on 
Dr. Martineau's lecture on Religion as affected by Modern Materi- 
alism, he declares : — 

" If, then, l Democritus and mathematicians ' so defined matter as to exclude the 
powers here proved to belong to it, they were clearly wrong." x 

He speaks of " the powers of matter," of the " power locked up 
in a drop of water," of " a formative power " coming " into play ; " 
this is indeed a return from a sensuous philosophy, and is consistent 
with the ever-enduring principles of the Stagyrite as they are found 
in the text-books of the Catholic philosophy. 

Professors Huxley and Tyndall have embodied their views in no 
systematic philosophic shape, they have edited no ordered corps of 
Agnostic doctrine ; they could not, as what has come from their pen 
has been in the forms of criticisms and replies. It has been reserved 
for Mr. Herbert Spencer, the third of these distinguished expositors 
of the new and now potent school of the physical science Agnostics, 
it has been reserved for Mr. Herbert Spencer to reduce to a system- 
atic unity this actual form of the agnostic creed. This he has done 
in his Synthetic Philosophy. We now pass to the special considera- 
tion of Mr. Spencer. 



Introduction, embracing Reflections on Materialism, op. cit., p. 341, 



PART II. 

MR. SPENCER'S RELIGION 



Genekal. Notion. 

Mr. Spencer has embodied in his voluminous work, entitled the \ 
Synthetic Philosophy, the now flourishing form of agnostic belief, 
i. e. y the Physical Science Agnosticism. The metaphysics of Mr. 
Spencer's Agnosticism have been accepted in direct line from the 
agnostic past, from the hands of Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel. 
With these philosophers Mr. Spencer is of accord that all knowledge 
is Relative, viz. : that the sole Empiric and the sole Phenomenal are 
commensurate with Knowledge and that there exists an Inscrutable 
Absolute. True Mr. Spencer gives this philosophy a new direction, 
but the main body of his Metaphysics is simply the Edinburgh 
thinker's Relativity of Knowledge. Mr. Spencer's Physics are the 
Theory of Evolution with the Democritean anti-theistic brand 
stamped upon i t. This Agnostic Metaphysics and Agnostic Physics 
are fused into the unity of the Synthetic Philosophy. ^ 

The distinctive feature of Mr. Spencer's Agnosticism is that, 1 
unlike all his predecessors, he believes that Religion is also contained J 
in the Agnostic theory. Sir W. Hamilton believed in a Personal 
God, but he did so despite his Agnosticism. All the other chiefs 
encircled Agnosticism in the spheres of Science and Metaphysics. 
Mr. Spencer alone demands the domain of Religion also. The 
God of the new creed is the Inscrutable Absolute. The Abso- 
lute being unknowable and being the Ultimate Cause of all things, 
is designated the Unknowable, the Unknowable Cause, etc. A 
few words are necessary to express its attitude towards Religion 
and Science. 

The Unknowable Cause has a two-fold function in the Synthetic 
Philosophy, it is the object of Religion and the foundation of 

61 



62 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Science and Philosophy. It is the common truth on which both 
Religion and Science are agreed. They express its opposite sides, 
Science, " its near or visible side," Religion, " its remote or invisible 
side." This acknowledgment on the part of Eeligion and Science 
of one common unifying truth and first principle, establishes a 
fundamental harmony between them. This acknowledgment or 
agreement is The Reconciliation of Religion and Science. 

The first part of the first of the ten volumes of the Synthetic 
Philosophy, i. e. P the first part of First Principles — The Unknowa- 
ble, has for its scope to prove the existence of the Unknowable as the 
modern God, and to establish the Religion of the Unknowable. 
The nature of the Unknowable is next discussed, and finally it is 
put down as the common ultimate principle uniting and harmonizing 
Religion and Science. 

The doctrine of the Unknowable has met with great disfavor 
among Mr. Spencer's English and American critics. All are agreed 
however that he is the only one of the English school of adversaries 
of Theism, who has ever attempted a Religious Agnostic system 
and speculated on the philosophic attitude of Science towards 
Religion. Professor Parsons of Harvard will, I think, represent 
the general consensus of Mr. Spencer's reviewers : — 

" To minister to Religion is the highest, the consummating work of Science, but 
Science cannot render this service where there is no religion to accept it." x 

The First Principles has found no great favor in foreign countries, 
i. e. among the non-English-speaking nations. The Italians look 
upon Materialism, Positivism and Agnosticism as the same philos- 
ophy. Biichner, Comte and Spencer are quoted at times as fol lowers 
of the same sect. 2 The only German author of note influenced by 
Spencer is Dr. G. von Giz'ycki in his little work, Pie Philosophis- 
chen Consequcnzen der Lamarck-Parwinischen Entwicklungstheorie. 
Materialism is the prevailing anti-theistic theory in Germany. In 
this manner the Darwinian theory of Evolution has been applied 
by the materialists in that country as a potent factor in defence of 
the materialistic conception of the world. They have not regarded 
the Spencerian view of a First Cause. 

1 On the Origin of Species, Amer. Jour, of Science and Arts, July, 1860. 
8 G. Bartellotti, Philosophy in Italy, Mind, vol. iii, n. 12, Oct., 1878. 



GENERAL NOTION. 63 

A Positivistic Materialism of the Skeptic kind seems to dominate 
in France among the non-theists. M. Renan arid M. Taine both 
eschew the metempiric. " Toute metaphysique m'epouvante," says 
a modern writer. And Mr. Spencer is metaphysical enough. As 
an isolated example, M. Th. Rabot in his Recent English Psychology 
finds admiration for Mr. Spencer. 

At the end of the seventh decade of this century, Messrs. Auguste 
Comte, J. S. Mill, Lewes and Spencer were widely read in Russia. 
Almost all Spencer is translated into that language. There are but 
three Russians in favor of modern so-called philosophy, M. M. 
Lesevich, Troitzky and de Roberty. No one of these, however, 
follows Mr Spencer. 1 

We will now enter upon the examination of Mr. Spencer's 
Religious Concept. This is the task we have set for ourselves; 
accordingly the Concepts of Science and Philosophy, as held by 
Mr. Spencer, will have a subordinate place in this review. They 
shall be introduced only and in as far as they tend to elucidate the 
discussion of Mr. Spencer's Religion. Mr. Spencer's Religious 
Doctrine is expounded in the first part of the first volume of the 
Synthetic Philosophy, i. e. y in the first part of his First Principles, 
and is headed the Unknowable. The examination of The Un- 
knowable is the inquiry at issue. 



1 Mind, Notes on Philosophy in Russia, vol. xv, no. 57, Jan., 1890. 






64 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Spencer's Religion Considered from the 
Historical Standpoint. 

§ 19. — Religion is not Mere Nescience. 

In the First Chapter of the Unknowable? Mr. Spencer treats of 
the Concept of Religion as contrasted with the Concept of Science. 
The Chapter in question is entitled Religion and Science. This 
is the most momentous question to which the human mind can 
address itself. Mr. Spencer brings us a new solution of the prob- 
lem and asks for it Religious and Scientific sovereignty. The 
issue is, shall this solution of his dethrone the existing doctrines 
held by the vast majority of humanity of the two continents, 
are we to have an Agnostic Religion and an Agnostic Science f 
The answer depends on Mr. Spencer's presentation of his case. It 
is our duty to see if this presentation brings with it valid claims 
for the New Religion and the new Science. 

Every discussion says Cicero, must begin with a definition. The 
disputants must be agreed on a common starting-point ; the point of 
agreement is the definition. Mr. Spencer disagrees with his oppon- 
ents on how the idea of God originated, vihat the true notion of God 
is, but, in common with all mankind, he will allow that the idea of 
God is the basis of all Religion. 2 He will admit that a Supreme 
Power on which man depends, which man is bound to recognize and 
which controls all human destiny, is the universal consensus of our 
race in respect to the notion of Religion. 3 This Supreme Power 
Mr. Spencer states is unknowable : man's religions dependence he 
puts in the fact that man depends on the Unknowable Cause as one 
of the effects produced by it : the concept of religious recognition 
he describes in these words — that it is " our highest duty to regard 
that through which all things exist as the Unknowable (§ 31, 

1 Note. — All references will be to the American edition, New York, 1S91. 
8 G. Van Den Gheyn, La Religion, Son Oriyine el Sa Definition, p. 91, Gand et 
Paris, 1891. * Ibid., p. 58. 



/ 



RELIGION NOT MERE NESCIENCE. 65 

p. 113). The theist, on the contrary, maintains that God is the 
pergonal intelligent, First Cause, his Maker, whom he is bound to 
worship and adore. Which of these two concepts is the right one, 
the scope of this examination of Mr. Spencer's Religion is to dis- 
close. For the present the following general definition, common 
both to Mr. Spencer and the theist, will suffice as a point de depart: 
Religion is man's dependence on and recognition of the Supreme 
Being, the Cause of the Universe. 

Now to the examination of Mr. Spencer's doctrine. In the first 
place Mr. Spencer presupposes the possibility of an Agnostic Relig- 
ion. This might be challenged. The Ancient Agnostic fathers 
would have laughed at the idea of such a religion. Protagoras and 
Hippias did not speculate such a possibility. Lucretius, with the 
mind of his master, saw no God behind the atoms, and following 
the view of Petronius he made the gods figments generated by 
human fear: — 

" Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, ardua coelo, 
Fulmina quum ceciderint." l 

Descending to the modern Agnostics, Berkeley, Sir W. Hamilton 
and Dean Mansel clung to the ancestral religion, but such a proceed- 
ing when confronted with their agnostic dogmas, has been repro- 
brated by all thinkers as an utter metaphysical failure — Hume, 
despite the cloudiness of his views on Religion, as set forth in the 
eleventh section of the Inquiry, in The Dialogues concerning Natural 
Religion, and finally in the Natural History of Religion, regarded the- 
ism as a purely theoretical hypothesis; 2 Kant in a similar manner 
viewed Religion as a matter beyond the competency of human reason. 3 
But neither Hume nor Berkeley nor Kant, nor Sir W. Hamilton, 
nor Mr. Mill, nor Professor Tyndall nor Professor Huxley ever 
consider an Agnostic Religion as possible. Mr. Spencer stands 
alone, the sole Agnostic leader who propounds a theory of Religion. 
This on the face of it starts a very strong presumption against him. 
However, even the weight of unanimous Agnostic authority will 
not ban the new Religion, if it can bring the cannons of good strong 
arguments to its support. 

1 De Nat. Rerum., lib. vi, v. 40. 2 Huxley, Hume, pp. 151 seqq., op. cit. 

3 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 393, op. cit. 



) 



66 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

The Chapter on Religion and Science claims that all knowledge 
belongs to the province of Science, thus assigning Nescience as the 
V province of Religion. Phenomena or mere Appearances are the 
subject-matter of Science, the Noumenon or the One Reality under- 
lying all phenomena is the subject-matter of Religion. For this 
reason phenomena are the sole Knowable and the noumenon is 
Unknowable. In a word, the sphere of Science is phenomena or 
the knowable, the sphere of Religion is the noumenon or the un- 
knowable. This being the case the bearing of Religion on Science 
will at once stand out. The Unknowable or primal Cause is the 
object of Religion, but it is also recognized by Science as the sub- 
stratum of all phenomena. For this reason it is the one truth that 

i. 

is admitted in common by Religion and Science, and this joint 
recognition constitutes their harmony and reconciliation. 

All knowledge belongs exclusively to the domain of Science — 
we will examine Mr. Spencer's argument for this statement. He 
first tells us what he understands by the term science : — 

"What is Science? To see the absurdity of the prejudice against it, we need 
only remark that Science is simply a higher development of common knowledge, 
and that if Science is repudiated, all knowledge must he repudiated along with 
it" (§5, p. 18). 

To this definition, as it stands, no one will object. But Mr. 
Spencer means it to exclude religious knowledge. We will collate 
the following passages. Referring to Religion he characterizes 
it as: — 



V 



"That nescience which must ever remain the antithesis to science (g iv, p. 17). 

And on the same page he sets Religion as the opposite of knowl- 
edge by the assignment to them of different boundaries in these 
words : — 

"If it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which 
transcends knowledge; then there can never cease to be a place for something of 
the nature of Eeligion." 

This same antithetical contrast runs through the w r hole chapter, 
in fact it is its chief scope and aim. — What are Mr. Spencer's 
proofs? We have searched, with all the diligence of which we are 
capable, throughout the twenty-two pages which Mr. Spencer gives 
to the subject, and we are unable to find any form of proof, unless 
we consider the following explanations as meriting the name. 



RELIGION NOT MERE NESCIENCE. 67 

After the above-cited definition of Science, i. e., that " Science is 
a higher development of common knowledge/' etc., Mr. Spencer 
adds : — 

" The extremest bigot will not suspect any harm in the observation that the 
sun rises earlier and sets later in the summer than in the winter. . . . Iron will 
rust in water, . . . wood will burn, . . . long kept viands become putrid," etc. 

It is needless to add that no one will deny these truths. They 
are knowledge, as all the facts of the natural sciences are, but they 
afford no demonstration that Science viewed as antithetical to Re- 
ligion, makes up all knowledge. It is one thing that the truths 
of the physical sciences are knowledge, it is quite another that 
Religion has not a title to the same name. 

Mr. Spencer seems to consider the pronouncement that Science 
is knowledge and Religion nescience, as not needing any proof. 
If this is Mr. Spencer's distinctive view, we should think it would 
require demonstrative support; if it is the commonly accepted 
definition, he is, of course, justified in abstaining from a demonstra- 
tion. But it is not the commonly accepted definition ; we shall 
make good this statement. 

The Sacred Scriptures predicate the knowableness of God as the 
object of Religion. We adduce the following texts : — 

" Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God." 

" When he shall appear, we shall be like to him : because we shall see him 
as he is." 

" We see now through a glass in a dark manner but then face to face. Now 
I know in part but then I shall know even as I am known." 

" When they knew God, they have not glorified him as God or given thanks." * 

In the first two passages, and in the first part of the third, we 
are told that we shall see God. The vision of God or, as theolo- 
gians term it, the beatific vision is the most perfect form of cognition. 
The other passages explain themselves. 

If we consult Patristic authority the same unanimous teaching 
stands out equally manifest. St. Augustine may speak for the rest: — 

"Cum Deum novimus, fit aliqua Dei similitudo in nobis." 8 

1 Matt., ch. v, v. 8 ; IJohn, ch. iii, v. 2 ; I Cor., ch. xiii, v. 12 ; Romans, ch. i, v. 21. 

2 De Trin., Lib. ix, cap. ii. Note. — A copious array of testimonies from the 
Greek and Latin Fathers can be seen in Cardinal Franzelin's sixth Thesis, on the 
coynoscibility of God by the hyht of natural reason (De Deo Uno, cap. ii, p. 94, seqq., 
edit, tertia, Konise, 1883). 



68 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

If we study the ancient predecessors of the Scholastics, we find 
them admitting divine or religious knowledge. Among the Greeks 
Aristotle's voice may be taken as representative ; he brings in the 
knowledge of the Deity under the science of metaphysics. 1 Among 
the Romans, Cicero wrote a philosophical treatise, De Natura 
Deorum, on the science of the knowledge of the Gods, and he 
defines Philosophy as : — 

"Scientia rerum divinarum et humanarum causarumque." 

A " scientia rerum divinarum " is a science of Religion. 

To come to the Scholastics, in consonance with these teachings 
of the ancients, they universally held as a prime notion that 
theology, or the knowledge of God, ranks as a science. Thus we 
find St. Thomas places the thesis in the very beginning of his 
great work the Summa Theologica : — 

" Sacra doctrina est scientia ex principiis superioris scientise quae Dei et beatorum 
propria est revelata." * 

Innumerable are the passages on the cognoscibility of God in 
the same author, and his doctrine no one will call in question as 
expository of the body of Scholastic thought. We find him posit 
the thesis that the knowledge of God is the supreme end and aim 
of all intellectual life : — 

" Quod intelligere Deum est finis omnis intellectuals substantiae." 3 

It is needless to add that modern Catholic philosophy has under- 
gone no alteration on this important point. Numberless, in fact 
the whole host of Catholic writers might be quoted. One or two 
references will suffice. The most recent Catholic Psychology 
published, which has a universal reputation among the English- 
speaking peoples, states that the " existence and the attributes " of 
God are demonstrated by strict logical reasoning and can, therefore, 
" be known as well as believed." 4 

The same doctrine is admirably expressed in the following con- 
cise formula by the Very Rev. Dr. Hewett, in his exposition of the 

1 op. cii. } Book xi, ch. vi, p. 326, seqq. 

8 1, q. 1, a. 1, c Cf. in Sent, iii, dist. 53, quaest. 1, art. 2, quaestiunc. iv. 
S S. Thomas, Summa TheoL, 1-2, q. 1, a. 7, and 1, q. 12, a. 4, and Cant, gen., lib. 
1, cap. 25. 4 M. Maher, S. J., op. cit., p. 317. 



RELIGION NOT MERE NESCIENCE. 69 

Catholic philosophy at the recent Parliament of Religions. He 
states that : — 

"All that we know of God by pure reason is summed up by Aristotle in the 
metaphysical formula that God is pure and perfect act, logically and ontologically 
the first principle of all that becomes by a transition from potential into actual 
being." l 

But it is unnecessary to single out the strictly Catholic teaching. 
On no existing subject is there such a universal philosophic con- 
sensus. Bacon agrees with St. Thomas in dividing the sciences 
into philosophy and supernatural theology, thus making revealed 
Religion a branch of scientific study. So high does he exalt it 
that he calls it: — 

" The fruit and sabbath of all human contemplations." 

And a little lower on the page he writes : — 

" Philosophy has three objects ; viz., God, nature and man." 2 

Descartes emphasizes the same doctrine with still more vigor, if 
that be possible. Not only does he affirm that God is knowable, 
but, according to his celebrated theory he derives other cognitions 
from the intellection of the Deity as from their source. For this 
reason he heads the thirteenth of the Principles of Human Knowl- 
edge in this wise : 

"In what sense the knowledge of other things depends upon the knowledge 
of God." 3 

Locke tells us that we have a " demonstrative " " knowledge " of 
" God's " existence. 4 Hegel proclaims " the immediate knowledge 
of God," and terms Religion " immediate knowledge ; " 5 Principal 

1 Rational Demonstration of the being of God, Neely, op. cit, p. 82. 

2 Novum Organum, Advancement of Learning, Book iii, ch. 1, p. 116, op. cit. Cf. 
Ibid., ch. ii, p. 120. — Conf. Dante, Hell, Canto ii, vv. 70-75, Cary's translation, new 
ed., New York. Note. — In this passage Beatrice is invested with the character 
of celestial wisdom or supernatural theology, so high is Dante's idea of the human 
knowledge of God. 

3 The Principles of Philosophy, in op. cit, p. 198. 
4 op. cit, Book iv, c. 3, sect, xxi, p. 450. 

8 op. cit, pp. 130, 123 and passim. 




70 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Caird has written a very valuable book on the Philosophy of Relig- 
ion ; and, finally, we find a very emphatic consent of the English- 
speaking mind at the Parliament of Religions, on the knowableness 
of God and the scientific character of Religion. As illustrations 
of the spirit of this consent, we find Dr. Landis entitle his Essay : 
How can Philosophy aid the Science of Religion ; l we find the 
aged Sir "William Dawson, in his Paper on The Religion of Science, 
teach the cogitability of the First Cause in his "qualities;" 2 we 
find Bishop Keane, in his preliminary remarks introductory to the 
reading of Cardinal Gibbons' Message, speak of the "divine phi- 
losophy of religion . . . enlightening man." 3 We, therefore, may 
safely conclude that apart from the Agnostic philosophy, Religion 
is a branch of Knowledge, a branch of Science and a branch of 
Philosophy, and that it is not Nescience no more than any of these 
three. We may also safely conclude that, as Mr. Spencer's Ag- 
nosticism is the only religious form of that philosophy, it stands alone 
and isolated among the Religions, in the affirmation that Religion 
is not Knowledge but Nescience. For this reason, as Mr. Spencer 
has presented no proof for his singular antithesis of Religion and 
Science, this flaw in his theory of Religion and Science, of itself 
alone, breaks that theory in pieces. In pursuing the criticism we 
should be more at ease if Mr. Spencer had proffered a proof. Its 
most seemingly improbable absence must impress the reader that 
perhaps we are prejudiced. However, we must asseverate that 
there is no proof on the part of Mr. Spencer. 

§ 20. — Religion is not Here Theory. — Testimony of all Creeds. 

Mr. Spencer defines Religion "as a theory of original causation." * 
He informs us in the same sentence that " the accompaning moral 
code " is " a supplementary growth." A little lower down he states 
that "even positive Atheism comes within the definition; for it, 
too, in asserting the self-existence of Space, Matter and Motion, 
which it regards as adequate causes of every appearance, propounds 
an & priori theory from which it holds the facts to be deducible." 
The essence of Religion, therefore, according to our author, consists 

1 Neely, op. cit., p. 432. s Neely, op. cit., p. 1 85. 

*Ibid., p. 419. 'First Principles, g 14, p. 43. 



RELIGION NOT MERE THEORY. 71 

in mere theory — " a theory of original causation " — the practical 
part of it is a mere super-addition, a simple supplement. 

It is news to us, and no doubt to the world at large it is equally 
so, that Atheism is a kind of Religion. The assertion, however, 
may hold good if Religion be a theory of original causation. But 
Mr. Spencer according to his custom has neglected to proffer a proof 
for this singular statement. We might apply in this and in the 
other frequent unproved assertions of Mr. Spencer, the worn adage 
of the Schools, viz., what is gratuitously asserted, may likewise be 
gratuitously denied. Still we will add our reasons. Were we to 
concede to Mr. Spencer that Religion is enclosed in the mere theo- 
retic order, his definition does not cover the whole ground. If 
Atheism be admitted into the kingdom of Religion, the Religion 
of Humanity cannot well be excluded. M. Comte and Mr. Harri- 
son, however, deny every theory of causation. 1 What is far more 
important, Mr. Spencer will be obliged to shut out Buddhism 
and its five hundred millions of Religionists from the category 
and name of Religion. Buddhism admits the law of cause and 
effect, but denies all theory of original causation. There is no 
First Cause, says Buddha, for " there is no cause which is not an 
effect." 2 ' 

Religion is not " a theory of original causation ; " equally in- 
admissible is the statement that the essential characters of Religion 
are a mere " supplementary growth." 

Were the "moral code" a simply supplementary growth, we 
should be able both to find religions existing, at some period of 
their history, without a moral code; and we should find religious 
creeds in general attach a greater importance to the theory than to \ 
the practice. But all is the contrary. In beholding the religions j 
of the universe not mere theory but practice strikes us everywhere. J 
The doctrine of love, 3 sacrifice, prayer is preached in Vedic Hin- 
duism. 4 Gautama summed up his teaching in the verse : — 

1 Frederick Harrison, Agnostic Metaphysics in The Insuppressible Book, by Gail 
Hamilton, p. 122, Boston, 1885. 

2 Shaku Soyen, of Japan, The Law of Cause and Effect as Taught by Buddha, in 
Neely, op. cit, p. 379. 

3 Swami Vivekananda, of India, Hinduism as a Religion, Neely, op. cit., p. 441. 
*Max Miiller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, The Gifford Lectures, 1892, p. 
22, London, 1893. 



/ 



<2 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

" To cease from sin, 

To get virtue, 

To cleanse the heart, 

That is the Keligion of the Buddhas." 1 

Repentance and a good life are at the core of the Confucian 
creed. Confucius remarks of the Book of Changes (Yih King) 
that :— 

" Those who multiply good deeds will have joys to overflowing ; those who 
multiply evil deeds will have calamities running over." * 

The Pelasgians and the ancient Germans worshipped God when 
they had no name to express him. 3 Because of its dreaded sanctity, 
Jehovah, the ineffable name of the Supreme Being was not pro- 
nounced by the Jews. The Egytians never uttered the name of the 
God Osiris so awful their veneration. Sculptor and scribe spelled 
it backwards, i. e. y instead of "As-ari " they wrote it "Ari-as." 4 
Before Mahomet, the Islamite worshipped the stars of Lot and Ozza 
and Manah and the three hundred and sixty idols in the temple of 
Mecca. 5 In the religion of Mahomet, fasting and prayer and alms 
are among the essentials, 6 the Koran is a book of religious practices. 
The aboriginal North American Indians, from Alaska to Mexico, 
believed in religious ceremonies and practiced propitiatory self- 
torture. 7 In Zoroastrianism, which was the state religion of ancient 
Persia, the Parsee worships fire as the symbol of the purity and 
effulgence of God. 8 The Pharaoh, like the Jewish high priest, alone 
entered the Holy of Holies (Adytum) to present the oblations of 
his people. They had the temple processions, the carrying of shrines 
and symbols of Gods. Before the Pharaoh entered upon a warlike 
expedition, the image of the warlike deity " was carried in a shrine, 
at the head of a grand procession of priests and adherents of the 

1 Eev. Alfred W. Momerie, of England, The Essentials of Religion, Neely, op. 
cit, p. 626. 

2 Kung Hsien Ho, Shanghai, Confucianism, Neely, op. cit., p. 255. 

8 Rev. Maurice Phillips of Madras, The Ancient Religion of India, Neely, p. 101. 

4 J. A. S. Grant, (Bey) of Cairo, Egypt, The Ancient Egyptian Religion, Neely, 
p. 265. 

5 George Washburn, D. D., of Constantinople, Christianity and Mohammedanism, 
Neely, p. 236. Conf. Max Miiller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, p. 21, ed. cit. 

6 Ibid., p. 241. 

7 Alice C. Fletcher, Religion of the North American Indians, Neely, p. 5S€. 

8 Jijanji Jamshodji Modi, Religious System of the Parsees, Neely, p. 178. 



RELIGION NOT MERE THEORY. 73 

temple, and the people bowed the head as it passed and sent up a 
prayer for blessing on the campaign." 1 

In a word, looking back upon the historic past, we find not a 
single race of men, in all the cycles of human history, who for a 
single moment held the theoretical separate from the practical in 
Religion. To this testify the dark Egyptian temples with the 
approaches through the long rows of sphinxes, the solemn Roman 
and the earth-loving Greek temples, the temple of the Juggernaut 
in India, and the other Brahmanic and the numerous Buddhistic 
houses of worship ; the Solomonic temple and the town temples of 
ancient Assyria and Babylon, the Keltic altars and the mosques 
and minarets of Western Asia. In all these perennial monuments, 
as well as in the jungle and on the mountain top, and wherever 
human foot has trod, we behold men " lifting up holy hands of 
aspiration and petition to the divine. Sounding through Greek 
hymns and Babylonian psalms alike are heard human voices crying 
after the Eternal." 2 

These and similar testimonies, which could fill volumes, not 
only illustrate and corroborate the connection between the theo- 
retical and practical features of the religious concept, but they also 
abundantly serve to exemplify that practice equally well with 
theory belongs to the essentials of Religion. Let any man conceive 
a religion of mere theory and he at once conceives the foremost 
of all shams ; he finds it just as satisfactory to the needs of his 
higher nature, as a mere theory of labor would be to appease the 
cravings of his body for meat and drink. 

Mr. Spencer's mistake lies in this, that because the mind must 
be conscious of the object of Religion before it worships and serves, 
therefore this intellectual element is not simply the first but the 
essential constituent, and the cultus which follows is not simply a 
posterior but a secondary or supplementary growth. But he might 
be corrected of this error if he animadverted that all the great 
teachers who have written on the theory of Religion, have cate- 
gorized their speculations as fitting into philosophy or metaphysics 
without even the dream of denominating them Religion. Aristotle's 

1 J. A. S. Grant (Bey) of Cairo, Egypt, The Ancient Egyptian Religion, Neely, 
op. cit, p. 266. 

2 C. S. Goodspeed, What the Dead Religions have bequeathed, Neely, op. cit, p. 234. 

6 



74 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Metaphysics, Plato's Philosophy (vols. V and VI), Descartes and 
Bacon's philosophical works, all treat of the divine Being and 
the origin of things, or, as Mr. Spencer would express it, they 
treat of " original causation." But this they consider metaphysics 
not Religion. Innumerable other authors might be cited. These 
Mr. Spencer will not, nor can he afford to despise. Their names, 
which are voices from a cloud of witnesses, must stand authoritative 
that theory is not the synonym of Religion, that the metaphysic 
of Religion and Religion itself are not identical. 

But to come to more direct evidence. — Strip Buddhism of its 
Nirvdna or extinction, 1 and what remains of it ? Nothing but the 
shell. But the Nirvana is not theory but practice, practice of a 
very sweeping kind. The same we find in Hinduism. Listen to 
the Brahmo-Somaj monk, Swami Vivekananda : — 

" The whole religion of the Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become 
divine, realizing the divine." i 

" In our Confucian Religion/' says Kung Hsien Ho, of Shanghai, 
" the most important thing is to follow the will of heaven." 3 And 
again on the same page — " The Chung Yang calls the practice of 
wisdom, Religion." 

The same is the spirit of Judaism, as seen in the Pirke 
Avoth — "The practical application, not theory is the essen- 
tial," said Simon. — " Deed first, then Creed," 4 added Abtalion. 
How could it be otherwise in a religion whose essence is the 
Ten Commandments written by the finger of God on the Tables 
of Stone? 

And in Christianity the divine Saviour says of the love of God 
and the love of our neighbor, that : — 

"On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets." 5 

In this sense Cardinal Gibbons introduces the Apostle's defini- 
tion : — 

1 Miiller, Science of Religion, Buddhist Nihilism, p. 141, New York, 1893. 
* Hinduism as a Religion, Neely, op. cit,, p. 443. Note. — The Italics are mine. 

3 Confucianism, Neely, op. cit., p. 253. 

4 Kabbi H. Peirira Mendes, Orthodox or Historical Judaism, Neely, p. 214. 
b MatL, ch. xxii, v. 40. 



RELIGION NOT MERE THEORY. 75 

" Keligion pure and undefiled before God and the Father, is this ; to visit the 
fatherless and the widow in their tribulation, and to keep oneself unspotted from 
this world." l 

Well then has Mr. Harrison said in his article entitled The Ghost 
of Religion in reply to Mr. Spencer's Religion ; a Retrospect and 
Prospect : — 

"To me it is rather the Ghost of Religion." * 

And he adds the reason a little further on as he speaks of his 
opponent's merely theoretic concept : — 

" In any reasonable use of language religion implies some kind of belief in a 
Power outside ourselves, some kind of awe and gratitude felt for that Power, 
some kind of influence exerted by it over our lives." 3 

Mr. Harrison repeats with great force the same line of reasoning 
in his second reply Agnostic Metaphysics to Mr. Spencer's counter- 
attack Retrogressive Religion. 4 

If we turn from Mr. Spencer's opponent to one of Mr. Spencer's 
most ardent disciples, we find him unwittingly agree with Mr. 
Harrison and the rest of the world on this point. Mr. Richard 
Bithell believes in the Unknowable : he believes the philosophy of 
the Unknowable is a theory of original causation. Yet he does 
not believe it Religion. He believes no Agnosticism is. He 



" As a matter of fact, Agnosticism has much less to do with religious beliefs 
than is commonly supposed. It is a system of philosophy not a theory of 
religion." 5 

This is further than we have wished to go ; Agnosticism the 
theory of original causation is philosophy, but it is not even the 
theory of religion ! 

Prof. Huxley voices the same opinion almost identically : — 

" Neither per se nor per aliud has agnosticism (if I know anything about it) the 
least pretension to be a religious philosophy." 6 

1 Religion characteristic of Humanity, Neely, p. 191. 

* Gail, op. city p. 23. 3 Ibid., p. 33. 4 Ibid., p. 95, and passim. 

5 Richard Bithell, B. Se., Ph. D., Agnostic Problems, Preface, p. vi, London, 
Edinburgh, 1887. 

6 T. H. Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, Essays, Agnosticism, p. 248, edit, 
quoted. 




76 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Finally we may listen to the eminent English authority : — 

"There is no religion — or if there is, I do not know it — which does not say, 
' Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which does not contain what Eabbi Hillei 
called the quintessence of all religions, the simple warning, ' Be good, my boy.' 
' Be good, my boy/ may seem a very short catechism ; but let us add to it, ' Be 
good, my boy, for God's sake,' and we have in it very nearly the whole of the 
Law and the Prophets." 1 

We may safely, therefore, conclude that Mr. Spencer's proposal 
to put the quintessence of Religion in a mere philosophic theory 
making the practice but a succrescence, is condemned to the doom 
of the religion of the philosophers of the last century, of whom 
Max Muller very forcibly says : — 

" They soon found that a mere philosophical system, however true, can never 
take the place of religious faith." 2 



§ 21. — The Unknowable is not the Object of Religion. 
Sir W. Hamilton's Authorities. 

Mr. Spencer proceeds to state that : — 

"The Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable" (§ 14, 
p. 46). 

And that all creeds are agreed on this point, however much they 
may differ in their special dogmas : that every thinker of note has 
subscribed to the conclusion, viz., that : — 

" The reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be unknown " 
(2 22, p. 69). 

Every thinker of note, we are informed, has subscribed to this 
conclusion. We shall examine the statement of the alleged sub- 
scription on the part of all the philosophers of eminence. Mr. 
Spencer's words immediately subsequent to the quotation are : — 

" ' With the exception,' says Sir William Hamilton, l of a few late Absolutist 
theorisers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of all others most harmoniously 
re-echoed by every philosopher of every school.' And among these he names 
Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Bcethius, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Gerson, 
Leo Hebrseus, Melancthon, Scaliger, Francis Piccolomini, Giordano Bruno, 
Campanella, Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Kant" (§ 22, p. 69). 

1 Max Muller, Fourth Lecture, Science of Religion, pp. 108-9, ed. cit. 

2 Ibid., Second Lecture, p. 43. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 77 

Before discussing the merits of this quotation, we must premise 
that Mr. Spencer designates the doctrine in question, viz., the 
unknowableness of the reality existing behind all appearances as 
Relativism. The term with him embraces two concepts, first the 
inscrutability of the First Cause, secondly, the consequent restric- 
tion of all cognition to the phenomenal or relative. Now to the 
assertion adduced. 

This assertion is made on the authority of Sir W. Hamilton, 
who bases it on certain passages from the works of the philosophers 
named in the quotation. The testimonies adduced are found in 
the work, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Appendix I, 
Philosophical, Book II, Testimonies to the more special fact that all 
our knowledge whether of Mind or Matter is only phenomenal, pp. 
597 sqq., New York, 1860. 

Sir W. Hamilton may be met with weapons taken from his own 
camp. Mr. Mill is an ardent support of the theory of Relativity 
of Knowledge : here is his verdict on Sir William's testimonies : — 

" He (Sir W. Hamilton) supports his assertions by quotations from seventeen 
thinkers of eminence, beginning with Protagoras and Aristotle, and ending with. 
Kant. Gladly, however, as I should learn that a philosophical truth, destructive 
of so great a mass of baseless and misleading speculations, had been universally 
recognized by philosophers of all past times, and that Ontology, instead of being, 
as I believed, the oldest form of philosophy, was a recent invention of Schelling 
and Hegel, I am obliged to confess that none of the passages, except the one 
from the Elder Scaliger, and the one from Newton, convey to my mind that the 
writers had ever come in sight of the great truth he supposes them to have 
intended to express. Almost all of them seem to be perfectly compatible with 
the rejection of it." l 

Not only does Mr. Mill consider that the Scotch metaphysician 
misinterprets his authorities, but even he goes so far as to affirm 
that Sir W. Hamilton himself did not hold the Relativity philoso- 
phy in more than a nominal sense. Mr. Mills' reasons to this 
effect are so cogent that they force from Mr. Spencer the confession 
that the quotations adduced by Mr. Mill in his Examination of 
Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, justify the assertion that the doctrine 
was espoused by him only in the name. 2 These Essays appeared 

1 J. S. Mill, An Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 182, New York, 
1884. 

3 Essays Scientific, Political and Speculative, vol. ii; Essay, Mill versus Hamilton, 
the Test of Truth, p. 384, stereotyped edit., London, 1868-74. Note— The First 
Edition of First Principles appeared in 1860. 



78 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

eight years after the " First Principles." So we must consider Mr. 
Spencer's avowal an ex professo retractation of his teachings in the 
" First Principles/' concerning Sir W. Hamilton's Relativism. In 
the light of this fact any further examination of the passages in 
question must seem superfluous. However, a cursory glance may 
not be out of place. 

Sir W. Hamilton quotes from Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book VII, 
chap. X). There is no chapter tenth in Book seventh. He cites 
same work (Book XII, chap. IX). Chapter ninth exists, but the 
passage is not there. The next extract (Book XII, chap. VII) 
does exist, but it is irrelevant. The Stagyrite in this Book and 
especially throughout this entire chapter, combats the Pythagorean 
principle of the " Incommensurability of Monads." He does not 
even suggest the slightest allusion to the theory of Eelativity. In 
fact not only not here but nowhere in his " Metaphysics " does he 
discuss the Phenomenality of Knowledge. His views on the 
matter, however, may be readily read in his teachings. He tells 
us that substances are made cognizable by the senses, in the signifi- 
cation that through the instrumentality of sense cognition of the 
sensible qualities, they are presented and made intelligible to the 
intellect. 1 He scoffs at the dictum of Protagoras — which Sir W. 
Hamilton adduces among the quotations we are discussing as clean 
and pure Relativism — that : — 

" Man is for himself the measure of all things." 
We will give his answer to Protagoras : — 

" For, likewise he (Protagoras) said that man is a measure for all things — in 
this way affirming nothing else than what appeared to every man, that this, also, 
indubitably is that which it appears to be. If, however, this is admitted, the 
same thing will happen to be and not to be, and to be both evil and good." 2 

Sir W. Hamilton has the happy faculty of producing two men, 
one of whom refutes the opinion of the other, and in the face of 
all this, to tell us not to mind, that they both agree. 

Bacon is another of the philosophers adduced. We give the 
text : — 

" Informatio sensus semper est ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia universi ; 
atque magno prorsus errore asseritur sensum esse mensuram rerum" (Instauratio 
Magna, distr. op., vol. i, p. 218). 

1 Book vii, chap, i, p. 212, ed. cit. 2 Ibid., Book x, ch. vi, p. 291. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 79 

The writer treats in this part of Induction as the true method 
of seeking Science. This induction, he thinks, must proceed by 
experiment, and experiment requires the use of the senses. The 
senses are defective and at times fallacious, he urges. Then follow 
the words above, viz. : — 

" The testimony and information derived from the senses have reference to man 
and not to the universe. And it is a great error to assert that the senses are the 
measure of all things." 

The testimony of the senses has " reference to man and not to 
the universe." They communicate to man the five special forms 
of knowledge to which they are limited. The mode of communi- 
cation of this knowledge depends on the nature of the sense. A 
luminous object is perceived by the eye, because it is luminous : an 
audible object by the ear, because it is audible. The object might 
have myriad other forms and properties; the eye is concerned 
solely with its luminousness ; the ear solely with its audibleness. 
The testimony of the senses, then, has reference especially and 
primarily to the peculiar nature of each separate sense, and after 
this to the object. But the senses being cognoscitive faculties of 
man, it can be truly said that the testimony of the senses has 
reference to man rather than to the universe, which is the mean- 
ing of the words of Bacon. The senses are not "the measure 
of all things." This is an easy corollary of the previous princi- 
ple. For if the senses are confined to the five forms of testimony 
peculiar to them, their perception does not embrace or measure 
all cognition. 

To sum up in a sentence : the senses are bearers of the circum- 
scribed modes of cognition which are proper of human nature or 
of man, and as they are circumscribed cognitions, they do not 
measure all manners of knowledge, they are not " the measure of 
all things." This explanation makes it manifest that it is the 
scope and aim of the great English admirer of induction, to warn 
his enthusiastic followers from an overbounded confidence in it as 
the method of science. He tells them, do not think that the senses 
are the witnesses of all science: they are the reporters of that 
science which sensible observation gives to man ; you will make 
a very great mistake if you fancy that they are the rule and 
measure of all things. It would be impossible to apply this saying 



80 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

of the Philosopher of Induction in a Relativist sense. It could 
not fit in. Besides, Bacon nowhere speaks in this part, of the 
nature or limitations of human knowledge ; he confines himself to 
sketching a scheme of the whole treatise. That is why it is called 
Distributio Operis. When he does speak, however, of the non- 
realistic doctrines, his denunciation is cast in clear and by no means 
equivocal language. 1 

Next comes St. Augustine : — 

" Ab utroque notitia paritur, a cognoscente et cognito" (de Trin., L. ix, cc. i, 2). 

Namely : — 

" Cognition is begotten by both the cognizing subject and the cognized object.' 

This is a time-honored dictum of the Schoolmen. It simply 
signifies that the object of knowledge impresses itself on the know- 
ing faculty so that, in virtue of the impress, the mind brings forth 
the act of knowledge. What has this to do with the incompre- 
hensibility of the First Cause ? how is this phenomenalism or, in 
Mr. Spencer's language, relativism ? The citator, I suppose, means 
that a subject and object of knowledge are spoken of, and that these 
being relative terms connote a relative knowledge. Let us clear 
this confusion : the cognoscitive subject and cognoscitive object are 
relative terms in the plain simple sense that the subject is related 
to the object in so far as it knows the object ; conversely that the 
object is related to the subject in so far as it is known by the sub- 
ject. If this be relativism every realist is as genuine a relativist 
as Sir W. Hamilton. But it is not a question of logomachies ; 
relativism in the present discussion imports a knowledge of phe- 
nomena and naught besides. Had Sir W. Hamilton taken a cursory 
glance at the two chapters in question, he must have found that St. 
Augustine deals in the first chapter with the attitude of mind we 
should have towards the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. The saint 
says explicitly that that truth is not intelligible to us in our present 
existence, and must be an object of belief, as it is a mystery. But 
in the future life, he continues, it shall be manifest to us, for then 
we shall see God face to face ; that is, we shall know Him most 

1 Novum Organum, Preface, op. cit., p. 380. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 81 

perfectly. This does not look much like relativism ; in fact, even 
Sir W. Hamilton will admit that it is its very antithesis. In the 
second chapter quoted the saintly author speaks on divine love; in 
neither chapter does he even hint or make the slightest allusion to 
the relativist tenets. 

Other excerpts from St. Augustine are adduced by Sir W. Hamil- 
ton, but they are even less relevant than the reference we have just 
discussed. 

Boethius is quoted : — 

" Omne quod cognoscitur, non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscentium 
potius comprehend itur facultatum" (JDe Consolatione Philosophies, L. v, prosa iv). 

In this place the author of the De Consolatione expounds the 
doctrine of the reconciliation between Divine Providence and 
Human Liberty. He says the divine foreknowledge of free future 
events by no means impairs the liberty of the human will from 
which those events proceed. He puts himself the objection : if 
those events are foreknown, must they therefore necessarily happen ? 
And he answers it by saying : they would, and would be devoid of 
all liberty, if the faculty perceiving them depended on them as the 
cause determinative of cognition, and not rather on its own intrinsic 
power of understanding all that is intelligible, by the sole fact that 
it has got the virtue in itself of understanding all things. Those 
who assert, he continues, that divine foreknowledge is subversive 
of human liberty, are beguiled by the mistake that in those things 
which each knows he depends solely on the power and nature of 
the objects known, which is entirely a mistake. He then subjoins 
the sentence quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, viz., that " whatever is 
known is understood, not according to its own virtue, but rather 
according to the virtue of the comprehending faculties." He adds 
several illustrations. For instance, the roundness of bodies is an 
object of perception by sight and an object of perception by touch. 
The cognition acquired by the eye is totally different from that 
acquired by the hand. What is the cause of the difference ? It is 
not the object, that is the same in both cases ; it is the perceiving 
faculty. Hence, knowledge depends not so much on the object, 
but rather on the cognoscitive faculty. This is the meaning and 
view of the dictum of Boethius. 



82 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

The following passages are also summoned to do battle for Rela- 
tivism : — 

" Mens humana per accidentia cognoscit substantiam " (Melancthon, Erotemata, 
Dialectices, L. i., Pr. Substantia). 

u Mens intelligit se non per se primo, sed cum csetera intellexerit, ut dicitur 
in L. iii, de Anima, t. 8, et in L. xii, Metaph., t. 38 " (Francis Piccolomini, De 
Mente humana, L. i, c. 8). 

"Intellectus non intelligit seipsum nisi per accidens fiat intelligibilis ; ut 
materia cognoscitur per aliquid cnjus ipsa est fundamentum " (Albertus Magnus, 
contra Averroem. de Unitate Intellectus, c. 7). 

"Mens humana ipsum corpus non cognoscit, nee ipsum existere scit, nisi per 
ideas affectionum, quibus corpus afficitur" (Spinoza, Ethices, pars, ii, prop. xix). 

These four places and others which might be given from the 
authors named by Sir W. Hamilton, all propound the same teach- 
ing ; and a literal translation of them may be put in these words : — 
" The human mind understands neither itself nor material sub- 
stances except in so far as itself and material substances are disclosed 
to it by the qualities with which they are affected." This is 
almost a verbal rendering, and it certainly gives the true and very 
substance of the doctrine. Each of the authors alleged affirms 
distinctly that the human mind knows itself, understands itself; 
knows, understands substances, material things. Relativism declares 
that the human mind does not know itself, does not know substances, 
material things. These philosophers take it for granted that mind 
and matter are cognizable : the burden of their argument is, how 
does the mind cognize itself, how does it cognize substance. Rela- 
tivism shuts this controversy out of court, and logically. For, 
as it denies the cognoscibility of anything but phenomena, the 
question how things in themselves are apprehensible, becomes with 
it a chimera. 

We will not burden the reader with any further consideration of 
this question. Sir W. Hamilton himself does not seem to know his 
own mind on the "Relativity of Knowledge." Mr. J. S. Mill 
affirms that he (Sir W. Hamilton) never held it in more than a 
nominal sense. Mr. Spencer even admits that Mr. Mill has demon- 
strated conclusively that Sir William misinterpreted the authors he 
adduces. These facts, taken together with Sir W. Hamilton's reck- 
less misquotation of some passages, and his total misunderstanding 
of them all, makes his argument seem more like a fantastical sham 
battle than a serious effort to demonstrate his cause. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 83 



§ 22. — The Unknowable is not the Object of Religion. 
The History of the Religions. 

To pass from Sir W. Hamilton's authorities to the statement that 
all Religions are at one in the admission of the Unknowableness of 
the First Cause, and that this verity is the " essential constituent" 
of all the creeds, we shall, I think, find that this statement is like- / 
wise utterly bereft of any historical value. We have historically 
demonstrated that knowledge enters into the essential elements of 
Religion, and by the very fact that not unknowableness but know- 
ableness is the " essential constituent " of all the creeds. We have 
likewise historically demonstrated that action as well as theory con- 
stitute the essence of Religion ; this is equivalent to the demonstra- 
tion that not the unknowableness of the First Cause, which is an 
assertion of strictly theoretical value, but something of a more 
complex character make up the essential constitutive of the religious i 
concept. But as Mr. Spencer appeals directly to the creeds, for a / 
short time to the creeds let us go with him. 

The question at issue, therefore, is : — are all religions perfectly 
at one in the tacit conviction that " the existence of the world with 
all it contains and all which surrounds it is a mystery ever pressing 
for interpretation ? " (§ 14, p. 43). Mr. Spencer affirms they are, 
and begins by telling us not what the different religious systems 
say of themselves, but what he thinks they mean. We should 
fancy that from such a mighty array of witnesses a few might be 
permitted to speak for themselves, without the need of interpreter. 
However, Mr. Spencer does allow the monotheistic faiths to speak 
their case. We will first examine his interpretation of the other 
alleged beliefs. We cite his argument as it stands : — 

"Be it in the primitive Ghost-theory which assumes a human personality 
behind each unusual phenomenon ; be it in Polytheism, in which these person- 
alities are partially generalized; or be it in Monotheism, in which they are 
wholly generalized ; or be it in Pantheism, in which the generalized personality 
becomes one with the phenomena ; we equally find an hypothesis which is sup 
posed to render the Universe comprehensible" (p. 43). 

In this passage Mr. Spencer expounds his theory of the historical 
Evolution of Religion originating in the primitive Ghost-theory. 
This theory he has attempted to substantiate in his article, Religion: 



\ 



84 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

a Retrospect and Prospect. 1 Here he assumes it. It is quite irrele- 
vant to our question whether it be true or no. We have solely to 
concern ourselves whether there be or not an historical religious 
consensus on the dogma of the unknowableness of the Primal 
Cause, as the " essential constituent " of each and every Eeligion. 
If the Ghost-theory were the truth, it would simply show, in so far 
as relates to us, that belief in a Personal God was not the religion 
of the primitive race and that man has had to struggle through error 
to attain to it. "Whereas, in Mr. Spencer's case, it makes a strong 
argument against him, for it would show that by a necessary 
process of physical evolution, the existing Religion of the Un- 
knowable has unfolded itself from a primal nebula of religious 
error into its present purity and perfection. In our case the Ghost- 
theory would be a mere uninfluencing accident, in Mr. Spencer's 
it would be the life germ — or death germ — of error from which the 
full flower of truth by the necessary laws of physical causation 
has been evolved. 

On this secondary matter — secondary in this place — we shall 
simply state in passing that Mr. Spencer bases his opinion both in 
the volume we are examining and in his Sociology, vol. I., as well 
as in the article quoted above, on mere philosophic proofs ignoring 
the fulcrum of historical support. To put it in the words of an 
eminent French authority, he has utterly ignored the utilities of 
philological research. 2 On the other hand in forty-five pages 3 
packed with the heaviest philological evidence, Max Miiller has 
demonstrated, beyond the pale of reasonable suspicion, that in all 
cases whether among the Aryan, the Semitic or the Turanian races 
— and these are the three great root-Religions of the world — the 
belief in a God or Gods preceded the belief in departed spirits and 
that to use his words : — 

"The worship of the spirits of the departed is perhaps the most widely spread 
form of natural superstition all over the world." 4 

We will now examine Mr. Spencer's argument. In the different 
forms of Religion, the Ghost-theory, Polytheism, Monotheism, 

1 Gail, op. cit., pp. 1, sqq. 

2 Albert Keville, La nouvelle Theorie Evhemeriste M. Herbert Spencer, Revue de 
I'Histoire des Religions, torn, iv, 1881. 

3 Science of Religion, Third Lecture, op. cit. 4 Ibid., p. 96. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 85 

Pantheism, we find " an hypothesis which is supposed to render 
the Universe comprehensible." This is the base of the argumenta- 
tion. The conclusion he derives is: therefore the world is "a 
mystery ever pressing for interpretation," in other words it is 
incomprehensible. We think the opposite conclusion is the right 
one. If the various Religions advance " an hypothesis which is 
supposed to render the Universe comprehensible," then the Relig- 
ions are agreed that the Universe is not incomprehensible, but 
comprehensible, is not a mystery but a solved problem. 
Mr. Spencer pursues his argumentation : — 

"Now every theory tacitly asserts two things: firstly that there is something 
to be explained ; secondly that such and such is the explanation. Hence however 
widely different speculators may disagree in the solutions they give of the same 
problem ; yet by implication they agree that there is a problem to be solved. 
Here then is an element which all creeds have in common " (p. 44). 

This common element is that the world is, "a mystery ever 
pressing for interpretation " (Ibid.). 

We concur with the writer that every theory asserts that there 
is something to be explained, not in the sense that it is unexplain- 
able. For if this were so, the theory would not offer an explanation, 
it would not attempt to explain what it considered unexplainable.^/ 
But in the sense that there is something which is proposed for 
explanation — we concur with the writer that every theory asserts 
"that such and such is the explanation, w viz., that what is pro- 
posed for explanation is explainable. Hence they agree not as Mr. 
Spencer would have it " that there is a problem to be solved," but 
that the problem is solved. Wherefore, the common element in the 
case of Religion is not that the world is a mystery ever pressing 
for interpretation, i. e., is unexplainable, but that the world is 
explainable and explained. This argument is so simple it may be 
misunderstood. We will indicate the headings : 1. Every theory^ 
asserts that there is something to be explained, i. e., that there is 
something proposed for explanation ; 2. Every theory asserts that 
such and such is the explanation, i. e., that what is proposed for 
explanation is explainable; 3. Therefore the different religious 
theories are agreed that the world is not unexplainable but explain- 
able, not a mystery but an explained fact 

Thus far Mr. Spencer's argument is directly against himself. 
His next form of proof is a collection of quotations. He informs 



86 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

his readers that we yet see altars " to the unknown and unknowable 
God " (p. 45). We know of no altars now existing " to the un- 
known and unknowable God." We cannot even imagine them. 
Mr. Spencer does not say where they are. We suppose the quota- 
tion marks marking the phrase, to the unknown and unknowable 
God, have reference to the altar which St. Paul saw at Athens, on 
which was written : " To the unknown God." l If that is the 
case, and the reference cannot be to anything else, the quotation is 
incorrect. It should be, not "to the unknown and unknowable 
God," but " to the unknown God," which makes a great difference. 
Moreover, the Athenians did not mean that the God in question 
was unknown to everyone, but unknown to them, for they referred 
to the God of the Christians. Again the citation turns with great 
wrath on Mr. Spencer. They had but one altar " to the unknown 
God ; " by the very fact they implied that they knew all the other 
Gods. St. Paul did not look on the unknown God as unknown to 
him ; as he stands in the Areopagus he tells who this unknown 
God is, and he accuses his hearers of superstition for erecting an 
altar to the unknown : — 

" Ye men of Athens," he said in the 'passage cited, " I perceive that in all things 
you are too superstitious. For passing by and seeing your idols, I found an altar 
on which was written: To the unknown God. What, therefore, you worship 
without knowing it, that I preach to you." 

Mr. Spencer goes on : — 

" In the worship of a God that cannot by any searching be found out there is 
a clearer recognition of the inscrutableness of creation" (Ibid.). 

We cannot understand to what living creed this passage refers. 
He adds : — 

" Further developments of theology ending in such assertions as that ' a God 
understood would be no God at all/ and ' to think that God is, as we can think 
him to be, is blasphemy,' exhibit this recognition still more distinctly ; and it 
pervades all the cultivated theology of the present day." 

Mr. Spencer does not name his authorities ; we are at a loss to 
know who they are, what their weight is, and what they mean. 

1 Acts of the Apostles, ch. xvii, vv. 22, 23. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION 87 

Still, we may safely say that no scientific theologian, if such used 
any of the phrases adduced, used them in Mr. Spencer's interpreta- 
tion. The phrase " a God understood would be no God at all " is 
theologically and scripturally correct, if the word " understood " 
be taken, as it may be, to mean " perfectly known." But in this 
signification it proves nothing for Mr. Spencer. No one holds that 
God is perfectly known. But we would like Mr. Spencer to show 
us any scriptural or theological authority who asserts that God 
cannot be imperfectly known. Mr. Spencer's failure to do this must 
be accounted a surrender of his argument. 

The other assertion that " to think that God is, as we can think 
him to be, is blasphemy," is another loose phrase which may mean 
anything, though no doubt used by the writer of it orthodoxically. 
We can conceive God anthropomorphically ; that is, we can picture 
Him in the imagination as if He acted in human fashion. In this 
way, the Book of Genesis, in describing how God formed the first 
man from the slime of the earth, says that He "breathed into his 
face the breath of life." Likewise, it states that " the Spirit of 
God moved over the waters." It is unnecessary to add that when 
we conceive God in this way the conception is purely metaphoric 
and does not represent God as He is. But can we not also conceive 
God as the Ultimate Cause ? and does not this concept present Him 
as He is ? Mr. Spencer will not deny this without being hoist in his 
own petard, for so he conceives the Unknowable. Similarly we can 
apprehend God as self-existent, intelligent, personal, free, loving, 
happy, immortal; at least the Scriptures and Theology teach us so. 
Hence it does not seem that Mr. Spencer has proved his point. 
Contrariwise, his inability to bring forward even a single Religion 
admitting the unknowableness of the Deity, turns into a very forc- 
ible argument that, not only there is not perfect religious unanimity 
in the profession of the Unknowable as the essential constituent of 
Religion, but that there is a perfect unanimity on one point at least, 
i. e., that an Unknowable God is not the essential constituent of 
Religion. 

The creeds have been introduced by Mr. Spencer to support his 
religious theory. Their voices have been silent in his regard. It 1 
is our duty to see if they be silent when appealed to against him. / 
No one will deny that Christianity, Judaism and Mohammedanism 
are monotheistic beliefs and admit an extra-kosmic Personal Creator. 



88 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Similarly the Parsees believe in a Personal God, Ahura-Mazda, 
which is interpreted the Omniscient Lord, Who is the ruler and 
framer of the universe. 1 The Confucianists also believe in the one 
Ti, " the Supreme Kuler and governor of all subordinate spirits." 2 
The Brahmo-Somaj, the newest creed in India, read the Yedas and 
the Upanishads as teaching a consimilar doctrine. 3 A like doctrine 
was professed in the early faiths of Egypt, of China, of India, of 
V Assyria, of Babylonia and of Keltic Druidhism. 4 

~No wonder then that Max Miiller in his famous philological 
proof draws the conclusion that the Finns and Lapps and Tchu- 
vashes, the Huns and Chinese and other Turanian races had in 
those primeval times before they separated, one common Religion 
which was a worship of heaven as the emblem of the Deity, the 
Infinite. 5 Likewise that the Arabians, the Syrians, the Pheni- 
cians, the Babylonians, the Carthaginians, and all who belonged 
to the Semitic family of men, invoked as the Supreme God, 
El, the Strong One in Heaven, and were united in one common 
worship of Him in that primitive age before there were Baby- 
lonians in Babylon, Phenicians in Tyre and Sidon or Jews in 
Mesopotamia. 6 Finally that the whole Aryan race, Greeks, Latins, 
Slavs, Kelts, Teutons, and the peoples of India before Homer 
sung the Iliad or the Veda was written, worshipped the Supreme 
Being whom they named the Heaven-Father, " Our Father who 
art in heaven." 7 With one harmonious voice these peoples all 
proclaim that there exists a Supreme Lord and Ruler, who 
.controls their destinies and whom they are bound to worship 
and love. This is surely knowledge, not indeed of the most 
perfect kind, but still knowledge. Such a God is not unknowable 
but known. 

If we turn from the primeval monotheism professed by the 
universal first races of men to the nature-worship and idolatry 

1 Jinanji Jamshodji Modi, Religious System of the Parsees, Neely, op. cit, p. 174. 
Conf. Annates du Musee Guimet, torn, xxi ; Le Zend-Avesta, Traduction du Yasna 
(par Darmstetter), p. 259, Paris, 1892. 

2 Pung Kwang Yu, Confucianism, Neely, p. 153. Conf. Max Miiller, Theosophy 
or Psychological Religion, ed. cit., pp. 12-20. 

3 Rev. P. C. Mozoomdar, Voice from New India, Neely, p. 135. 
* Prof. N. Valentine, Theistic Teachings of Historic Faiths, Neely, p. 93. 

5 The Science of Religion, ed. cit., p. 99. 

6 Ibid., p. 83. 7 Ibid., p. 71. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 89 

into which it was degraded, 1 in them, too, we find a profession of 
knowledge. Hindu Pantheism is considered by many as the nearest 
approach to, if not identical with, Mr. Spencer's Unknowable. 2 
But a distinction is to be made. If Brahmanism be driven to its 
strict logical conclusion, it will be found as a system of philosophy* 
to signify the existence of Brahma, and Brahma will be the abstract 
totality of all existences. In this sense the above assertion is 
justifiable. But the Hindu does not worship this philosophic 
abstraction. As a system of Religion, Brahmanism is quite the 
opposite. The heart recoils from the absurd, the Hindu con- 
cretizes the abstraction and it becomes the Supreme Good, known 
as eternal, holy, happy, all-merciful, the saver. A Vedic sage 
speaks of Him : — 

"Hear ye children of immortal bliss, I have found the ancient one who is 
beyond all darkness, all delusion, and knowing him alone you shall be saved from 
death again." * 

The Rishis of the Veda sang : — 

" Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou 
art the source of all our strength." * 

Buddhism does not properly enter into the present discussion. 
It can neither speak in behalf of the existence of a God in any 
true sense of that word, nor of the existence of an Unknowable 
First Cause. It admits neither. It can utter no testimony. It is 
true that Buddhism ranks as a religion. This witnesses against 
Mr. Spencer's pronouncement that all religions admit the Un- 
knowable, but Buddhism is shut out of court when judgment is 
pronounced on the cognoscibility or non-cognoscibility of God. 

Buddhism, however, as it came from the mind of its founder, 
Bhagavat Sakyamuni, and as it exists in the Buddhistic canons, 
the Mahay ana and Hinayana, may justly be regarded as an ideal 
theory and not a religion. Its creator evidently intended it to 
satisfy all the religious cravings of the soul. It has not done so. 

1 Ibid., p. 71. Conf. Neely, Theistic Teachings of Historic Faiths, Prof. N. Valen- 
tine, p. 92, and Ibid., The Religions of the World, Mgr. C. D. D'Harlez, p. 296. 
5 Principal Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 322, new edit., New York, 1891. 
3 Neely, The Ancient Religion of India, p. 103, Rev. M. Phillips. 
4 Swami Vivekananda, Hinduism as a Religion, Neely, op. cit., p. 441. 
Ubid. 
7 



i 



90 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

The other creeds, no matter how degenerate or corrupt, have, as a 
matter of fact, each existed independent or self-sufficient among 
the peoples by whom they were professed. They needed support 
from no other belief. They stood alone claiming and receiving 
full religious empire. They were not, are not simply a theory, 
but a living observance. Such is not the case with Buddhism : 

" Chinese Buddhism cannot be called an independent religion any more than 
Buddhism in Ceylon, Burmah and Siam, or in Nepaul, Tibet and Mongolia." 1 

The same is true of its greatest stronghold, Japan. Buddhism 
is not the practical religion of Japan, but Buddhism leaning on 
Confucianism and Shintoism : — 

" One and the same Japanese is both a Shintoist, a Confucianist and a Budd- 
hist. He plays a triple part, so to speak. This must be strange to you, but it is 
a fact. Our religion may be likened to a triangle, which is made up of three 
angles. One angle is Shintoism, another is Confucianism, and a third angle is 
Buddhism, all of which make up the religion of ordinary Japanese. Shintoism 
furnishes the object of objects, Confucianism offers the rules of life, while Budd- 
hism offers the way of salvation. So you see we Japanese are eclectic in every- 
thing, even in religion." * 

The Buddhistic faith is eminently practical as a dependent or 
supplementary creed, but a religion in the full sense of the term, 
which can meet all the religious requirements of our nature, it is 
not. One element it lacks, and that is a God. As the noble Gau- 
tama conceived it, as a full and perfect faith it is purely platonic, 
and as such it is destined to live in the peaceful land of theory. 

Still the spectacle of the insufficiency of this unique and isolated 
form of Religion presents a fruitful reflection. Buddhism is in- 
sufficient because it needs the divine. A being to worship and 
revere, on whom our finite helplessness depends, i. e., a God, is 
demonstrated as a natural need for the human race by the incom- 
pleteness of the teaching of Sakyamuni. Worship, reverence, 
recognition of dependence on the Deity clearly presuppose him 
knowable, however vague may be the knowledge. This makes 
Buddhism a strong though negative proof of the knowableness of 
God. Its very negation and exclusion of the Divine Being from 
the contents of the religious concept marshal themselves into the 

1 Max Miiller, The Science of Religion, Second Lecture, op. cit., p. 37. 

2 Nobuta Kishimoto, Future of Religion in Japan, Neely, p. 795. 



" Keligion is man's belief in a being or beings mightier than himself and inac- 
cessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiments and actions, with the 
feelings and practices which flow from such belief." 1 

This description, however, will not meet the modern anti-theistic, 
so-called scientific religions, v. g., the religious form propounded in 
the work Natural Religion by the author of Ecce Homo : or the kin- 
dred creed which Strauss teaches in The Old Faith and the New : or 
that other religious scheme which has some existence in Germany, 
and whose name explains itself, Idealism or the striving for the 

1 Theism, Lecture II, General Idea of Religion, p. 32, 7 ed. revised, N ew York, 1893. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT THE OBJECT OF RELIGION. 91 

ranks of the foremost factors to proclaim that man must have the 
Infinite, and that some knowledge of him, be it luminous in the 
highest degree, or be it dark in the clouds of the grossest error, is 
the essential heritage of the human mind. 

From what has been said of the numerous and essentially diverse 
forms of Religions, the question naturally suggests itself is a defini- 
tion of Religion possible. Mr. Spencer's definition, gathered from 
the collected passages we have been considering, would be : A 
Theory of Nescience having for its Object the Unknowable First 
Cause. We have established the three opposite characteristics, i. e., 
that Religion is not Nescience but knowledge, not in the mere theo- 
retic but also in the practical order, honoring an object not incog- 
nizable but cognizable and cognized. 

These three marks are common to all the historic religions, yet 
they do not constitute a definition of Religion any more than the 
attributes vegetative and sensitive, which are predicated of the sum 
total of humanity, constitute a definition of man. To arrive at a 
correct definition of a word, we have to take all its different received 
significations and abstract the common elements, if common ele- 
ments there be. These common elements will comprise the defini- 
tion. If there are no common elements, there is no definition. We 
shall apply this process to the term " Religion." If we include 
Buddhism, no definition is possible ; in Buddhism no form of wor- 
ship enters as a constituent element. Limiting our inquiry, there- 
fore, to the religious beliefs which profess themselves as independent, 
if we draw a boundary line around the great forms of historical 
Religions, i. e., the monotheistic, pantheistic and polytheistic creeds, 
the definition supplied by Prof. Flint will be found applicable : — 






92 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

ideal in everything : * or, as a final instance, Positivism as conceived 
either by Mr. Harrison or by its founder, M. Comte. These and 
all similar forms and sub-groups either make a complete divorce 
between all moral or salvational action and belief, or they eliminate 
every concept of dependence on or even of belief in "a being or 
beings mightier " than man. 

The only element which we can discover common to all amid the 
clashing, warring antithetic elements of all the creeds is "Admira- 
tion" Messrs. Strauss and Seely admire the order and beauty 
of Nature, Dr. Brodbeck admires the Ideal, Messrs. Comte and 
Harrison admire Departed Humanity. Admiration they all share 
with the great creeds of our race. But Admiration is not Religion. 
The artist admires the works of art, the naturalist the works 
of nature, man admires the nobilities of his fellow man. But 
assuredly that is not Religion. 

To corroborate the hopelessness of a definition of Religion, accepted 
in this wide and most general sense, we finally append the list of con- 
flicting definitions quoted by Professor Flint in his work on Theism, 
pp. 344 seqq. : 1. Religion consists essentially and exclusively of 
knowledge ; 2. Religion is without the element of a rational founda- 
tion ; 3. Religion is resolved into feeling or sentiment ; 4. It is a 
figment founded on fear ; 5. Desire, or an ignorant and illusive 
personification of man's own nature as he would wish to be ; 6. A 
feeling of absolute dependence, of pure and complete passiveness ; 
7. Conscience as " the religious organ of the soul ; " 8. Love ; 
9. A sanction for duty (Kant). 

If Religion is undefinable in the generic use of the term, i. e., if 
it has no elementary constituents or constituent common to all the 
religious varieties and proper and exclusive to itself, Mr. Spencer's 
definition — which is supposed to take in all the faiths — is once 
more shown to be fallacious, and his advancement of the Unknow- 
able as the common universal constituent in all creeds and theories, 
appears in stronger light as illusory and historically foundationless. 

§ 23. — The Religion of the Unknowable not a Pi % ogressive Religion. 

The full scope and aim of Mr. Spencer's religious theory 
is to put itself forward as a progressive religion, the expres- 

1 Dr. A. Brodbeck, Idealism the New Religion, Neely, p. 122. 



THE UNKNOWABLE NOT A PROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 93 

sion of the last and most perfect form in the evolution of the 
religious life. 

Fetishism, which Max Miiller stigmatizes somewhere in his 
Hibbert Lectures as "a superstitious veneration for rubbish/' is 
most undoubtedly the most degraded form of the religious senti- 
ment. Man worships the stock and the stone. 

Polytheism ascends to a higher stage. Still the limitations and 
imperfections of the polytheistic deities cannot satiate the soul of 
man. He must penetrate beyond the finite. Nothing will satisfy 
him until his mind contemplates the infinite beauty; his heart 
yearns for the infinite love ; his mortality longs for an immortality, 
for an undecaying union with the Eternal. " It is a consummation 
devoutly to be wished." Shall man reach it ? That is not the 
question. We are now speaking of the religious ideal, comparing 
the religious forms, Polytheism is wanting. 

Pantheism supplies us with an Infinite, Immortal Being. But 
this Being is not a Personal God, i. e., it is not a free, holy, intel- 
ligent individual, distinct and separate from the imperfect exist- 
ences of the finite world. On the contrary it is " the Sat, i. e., the 
formless All." * This " formless All," is existence pure and simple, 
the sum total of all existence, and apart from it there is nothing 
else real, all is illusion. Truth, beauty, friendship, immortality, 
we ourselves are mere illusions, phantoms, " fictitious emanations 
from Brahma like mirage from the rays of the sun." 2 

We need not say that such a Deity, without truth, love or any- 
thing else that is admirable, not only is not a noble, ideal object of 
worship, but shatters and annihilates everything that our nature 
looks up to. It has never existed out of the dreaming philoso- 
pher's brain, not even in the dreamy land of India, as a vital, 
practical religious force. It is not the Nirguna Brahma of the 
Upanishads but the humanized gods Agni, Vishne and Indra and 
Rudra and the rest, as we have already stated, that the Hindu prays 
and adores. 

Monotheism presents the Divine Being as a Personal God, as 
pure, holy, eternal, living, intelligent and merciful. He can sym- 
pathize with us and befriend us ; He is "our Father, Who" is "in 
heaven." No conception can be grander ; it is the realization of 

1 Manibal Ni Dvivedi, Religious Belief of the Hindus, Neely, op. cit., p. 107. 

2 Ibid., The Ancient Religion of India, p. 103, by Rev. Maurice Phillips, of Madras. 



94 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

the human ideal. If we conceive truth, He is the fulness of truth ; 
if we conceive love, He is its origin and its infinite plentifulness ; 
if we conceive beauty, He is to whom St. Austin addresses the 
immortal ecstasy : — 

" O pulchritudo tain antiqua quam nova ! " " O beauty, ever ancient, ever new ! " 

Do we conceive happiness, "our being's end and aim?" He is 
" our reward exceeding great," merciful, benign, healing our sorrows, 
cancelling our crimes, and when we die, clasping us in paternal em- 
brace to the blessedness of perennial life. This is the highest ideal 
of the human spirit. This is the coronation of the religious evolu- 
tion. All progressive religious conditions must be along these lines. 
We can ever grow in love and knowledge of the Infinite Truth and 
the Infinite Beauty. We can never grow beyond it, for there is 
nothing beyond. 

Mr. Spencer's religion admits an impersonal existence. The 
Unknowable, like Brahma, is pure existence and nothing else ; it 
is without intelligence, without beauty, without love. It stands on 
the same plane, if not lower down, as Hindu Pantheism. To wor- 
ship such a god is to retrograde, not to progress. We defined Mr. 
Spencer's Religion as a Theory of Nescience having as the object 
of its worship the Unknowable First Cause. We will put Mono- 
theism, or the belief in a Personal God, by its side by way of con- 
trast, as a conclusion to the comparative examination which has 
been the subject of this chapter. Mr. Spencer does not recognize 
Revelation. Limiting ourselves, therefore, to the monotheistic 
conception as it is seen by the eye of reason alone, and as it was 
perceived by the great Christian philosophers in their evolution 
of the theistic philosophy of the Stagyrite, monotheism may be 
defined as the recognition and worship of the Supreme Being as 
our Creator and Sovereign Lord and Final Rewarder. 

Thus put side by side, the Unknowable God, and the Monothe- 
istic Personal God, the reader will judge for himself which is the 
Retrogressive , which the Progressive Creed, which the most perfect 
form in the evolution of existent religious life. 



CHAPTEK II. 

Me. Spencer's Religion Considered from the 
Metaphysical Standpoint. 

§ 24. — Question Stated. 

Mr. Spencer's argument viewed from the historical standpoint 
was: 1. Science comprehends all knowledge, therefore Religion 
and Nescience are identical ; 2. Religion is essentially theoretical ; 
3. The Religious Theory, held by all forms of faiths and found to 
be their constituent element, is that the Power which the universe 
manifests to us is utterly inscrutable. We have historically dis- 
proved these propositions. As Mr. Spencer passes from the his- 
torical line of argument to the metaphysical, it is our duty to follow 
him. The question therefore is, will Mr. Spencer's proofs stand 
the metaphysical test ? These proofs are disposed in the following 
order : 1. Ultimate Religious Ideas and Ultimate Scientific Ideas 
are Unknowable ; 2. These ideas represent the one reality under- 
lying all appearances, i. e., they represent the Unknowable ; 3. The 
Conditioned or phenomenal alone is knowable ; 4. The phenomenal 
or knowable is the object of Science, the Unknowable is the object 
of Religion ; 5. The nature of the Unknowable is metaphysically 
examined and explained. 

We need not dwell upon the importance to the student of 
Religion of a calm and impartial examination of this great ques- 
tion. Is the world about us an illusion or is it a reality ? Are 
we to consider those things which we see and hear and touch, 
mere pictures, hollow forms, without substance, thin as air, empty 
nothings ; or are they solid, substantial, with a body to them ? 
Will they, like the "Ghost" in "Hamlet," fade "at the crowing 
of the cock ? " Is Mr. Spencer's voice " the trumpet of the morn " 
to awake the new "god of day," the god of Modern Science, the 
" Unknowable," at whose warning, " the extravagant and erring 
spirit " — the illusion which men have called a real world — " hies 
to his confine," of darkness and ignorance, before the light of the 
day of the new philosophy ? Or, on the contrary, is this world 

95 



\ 






96 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

" in which we live, move and have our being/' a real, concrete, 
solid, substantial thing, such as it reveals itself to us? Are we 
ourselves, but the pictured forms of our own imaginings ? Are we 
to ourselves unknown, except as images ; the creations of our senses, 
mere bodily shapes and nothing more ? 

Mr. Spencer replies that we know the world and all existing 
things merely as " appearances " or " phenomena," that is, we know 
the images of things, we know their shapes and forms; these 
images do not exist outside of us ; they are the creations of our 
senses; they are pictures painted on our imaginations with no 
existence outside. The universe, what is it ? does it exist ? what 
are we ourselves? do we exist? are we such as we think our- 
selves to be, real, live, solid flesh and bone ? Mr. Spencer makes 
answer : we don't know, and what is more, we never can know. 
We know nothing except appearances ; as to the rest, we are in the 
dark. He conceives that behind " all appearances," there is one 
immense, omnipresent reality, which is you and I and all things. 
This reality absorbs and engulfs all existences into one tremendous 
unity. You think and have the never-to-be-shaken conviction 
that you are, not a phenomenal but a real existence, and that you 
are distinct from your fellows, and they from you. But our author 
will inform you that you mistake ; that this conviction is to be 
classed with imaginary realities, 

" Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise." 

All personal identity vanishes ; all individual consciousness is 
of a phantasmal character ; all plurality of existences shares the 
same fate. Plurality of appearances there is, forms manifold; 
plurality of substances, no. There is but one substance, and that 
is the Unknowable. Appearances, phenomena, existing nowhere 
but in our imagination — which is also nothing but an appearance — 
these alone are known to us. We know naught but shadows ex- 
isting in a shadow, and we who know are also shadows. — Shadows 
know shadows existing in shadows. 

§ 25. — Ultimate Religious Ideas — Self-existence, Creation, the 
Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite. 

In his argument against the conceivableness of the origin of the 
Universe, Mr. Spencer lays down that the notions of Self-existence 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 97 

and Creation " by. external agency" are inconceivable (p. 30, § 11). 
The ratiocination against the thinkableness of Self-existence is as 
follows : — 

"Self-existence" "necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to 
form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a 
beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence 
through infinite past time implies the conception of infinite past time, which is 
an impossibility" (p. 31, $ 11). 

The sum and substance of our author's philosophy is that his 
Unknowable is without a beginning. For instance, he characterizes 
it as the "Ultimate Cause" (p. 108, § 31, passim). Being the 
Ultimate Cause, there was no cause prior to it, no cause gave it a 
beginning, it was without a beginning, unless you seek refuge in 
the absurd hypothesis that all of a sudden it sprung from non- 
existence into existence, producing itself. Mr. Spencer, however, 
wisely rejects this hypothesis which he names "self-creation." 
The conceivability of Self-existence, therefore, is vainly attacked 
by Mr. Spencer. Its validity is the life-blood of any bone and 
sinew there may be in his Ultimate Cause. 1 

Mr. Spencer's illogicalness, i. e., his profession in his own case 
of teachings, which he deems logically unverifiable in his adver- 
saries, proves the suicide of his own doctrine, still it is no more 
than a negative argument in our favor. We may be wrong. This 
compels us to use positive demonstration. The argument is, Self- 
existence is unthinkable because : — 

" To conceive existence through infinite past time implies the conception of 
infinite past time which is an impossibility." 

It is impossible to form an image of any infinitude, whether of 
duration, space or number, an image such as we can form of a man 
or a horse or any other being that easily can be pictured to the 
senses. The mind, however, conceives thousands of unpicturable 
things. We cannot form a picture of the size of the earth, much 
less of the sun or the universe, yet they exist ; much less can we 
image the whirlings of the myriad hosts of atoms and the multitu- 
dinous but ordered movements by which they marshal themselves 
into these mighty armies which we call the worlds. 

1 William M. Lacy, An Examination of the Philosophy of the Unknowable, \ 32, p. 
96, Philadelphia, 1883. 



98 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

If it is not necessary that an object should be imageable to be 
conceivable, neither is it necessary that we should conceive sepa- 
V rately every part of which the object is made up, as Mr. Mill clearly 
proves against Sir W. Hamilton. 1 It would be impossible to carry 
our thoughts in succession over every part of infinite duration. It 
cannot, I repeat, be exacted of us to do this, on the ground that if 
we do not the conception is inconceivable. On how many of our 
finite operations do we go through such a process ? Let us take 
the complex period 500,000 years. This period Mr. Spencer will 
not claim is inconceivable. Neither will he claim that it is neces- 
sary mentally to go over every separate unit of this period so as to 
be able to form a conception of it. We have a real conception, 
however, of this vast totality of time ; we can distinguish it from 
everything else, we know how much and what it means ; it is as 
much a mental and a living unit as any of the smaller periods. 
The same may be said of infinite duration ; it is not a vague or 
indefinite notion, but distinguishable from everything else, with 
its own peculiar and distinct attributes, and what more is requisite 
to make it conceivable ? 

The idea of infinite duration, like all the infinites and many 
more of our percepts, is partly positive and partly negative in its 
make-up. We conceive duration; we then negative all limitation or 
finiteness. Will the negative element destroy its conceivableness ? 
In that case imperfect, inaccurate, inapt, inert, unknowable, unknoitm, 
and a million other ideas, which make up our daily mental and social 
life, will be relegated to the blank regions of inconceivableness. 

Creation " by external agency " is the next " ultimate religious 
idea " presented to us as inconceivable. We are informed respect- 
ing it that : — 



(id 



"Alike in the rudest creeds and in the cosmogony long current among ourselves, 
it is assumed that the genesis of the heavens and the earth is effected somewhat 
after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture. And this 
assumption is made not by theologians only, but by the immense majority of 
philosophers, past and present" (p. 33, $ 11). 

We suppose Mr. Spencer refers to the biblical cosmogony. We 
are afraid he has not read it right. He seems to confound the 

1 Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, edit, quoted, pp. 106, 107. Conf. 
Martineau, Essays, Reviews and Addresses, vol. iii, Science, Nescience and Faith, p. 
213, London and New York, 1891. 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 99 

biblical creational narrative, " the cosmogony long current among 
ourselves," with the poetical cosmogony of Hesiod, the cosmogonies 
of Thales, Anaxagoras and Plato. These latter bear a kinship with 
the process of manufacture ; they describe the fashioning of the 
elemental matter. Not so with the current biblical cosmogony. 
"The artisan," as Mr. Spencer very well says, "does not make the 
iron, wood or stone he uses, but merely fashions and combines 
them." In the biblical creation, on the contrary, the Great Arti- 
ficer not merely fashions and combines the iron, wood and stone 
and all the pre-existing elements, but also makes them and causes 
them to begin to exist A greater dissimilitude between " the process^ 
of creation and the process of manufacture" cannot possibly be 
presented to the mind. It is, to say the least, surprising that Mr. 
Spencer should assert the contrary, and the surprise is augmented 
by the added assertion that the analogy between the existing crea- 
tional concept and that of "carpenter work" "is made not by 
theologians only, but by the immense majority of philosophers, past 
and present." 

The concept of creation is simply this : that God, by His infinite 
power, has made the world out of nothing, i. e., has caused it in all 
its totality to exist. We cannot conceive how or in what manner 
God has done this, because the mode of operation of Infinite power 
is beyond our apprehension. Still we can conceive the fact, and of 
the fact only there is question. We can conceive the world not 
existent, we can conceive it as existent, we can conceive the reason 
of the transitus from not-existence to existence, viz., the power of 
the Almighty Cause. 1 Mr. Spencer, to sustain his position of the 
unthinkableness of creation, will have to show the absurdity of any 
or all of these constituents. 

At first sight it might seem that the transitus from not-existence 
to existence bears absurdity on its very face. This is not so, how- 
ever, as a little reflection will show. Take any ordinary event, 
v. g., it begins to grow cold now, it was warm a second ago. This 
change from heat to cold, this cold did not exist, it now begins to 
exist. Here is a transitus from not-existence to existence ; we do 
not know how it took place but we know the fact, it is perfectly 
thinkable. 

1 S. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1, q. 45, a. 2, and QucesU disp., q. 3, de pot, a. 1. 



100 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Another difficulty suggests itself; in the instance cited we see the 
change from heat to cold, the change is a plain fact. But in the 
case of creation there is no such sensible evidence. But we must 
reflect that in this case just as much as in creation the transitus is 
not a visible fact. At a certain moment we feel the heat, a moment 
later we cease to feel it, and we begin to feel the cold. The two 
facts are isolated and unconnected, as Hume has very well shown, 
so far as any sensuous nexus is concerned. The transitus, the 
ground or the reason of the passage from not-existence to existence, 
equally the same in either example, is the principle of causation 
visible to the sole eye of the mind. 

The argument used by the supporters of the creational philosophy 
is that the mutability of the Kosmos proves that it has not in 
itself the ground of its own existence. Therefore it must derive 
its existence from some other being, i. e., it must have been created. 
This is a philosophical explanation and as such it is scientific and 
must be so considered. It needs no defence here because from Mr. 
Spencer it suffers no attack. If Mr. Spencer turned his logical 
guns on it, as Mr. Mill did in his Three Essays on Theism, we 
should deem it our duty to return fire. At present we simply 
sketch the line of demonstration, to indicate the reasonableness of 
the creational position. To recapitulate, Mr. Spencer presents a 
carpenter-theory notion of the biblical and theological cosmogony. 
This is incorrect, and can suggest no proof of the inconceivableness 
of Creation ; Mr. Spencer's argument is a misconception. 

Mr. Spencer's demonstration against the conceivability of the 
Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, he takes from Mr. Mansel : — 

" But these three conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, all equally 
indispensable, do they not imply contradiction to each other, when viewed in 
conjunction as attributes of one and the same Being ? A Cause cannot as such, 
be absolute: the Absolute cannot as such be a cause. The cause, as such, exists 
only in relation to its effect : the cause is a cause of the effect ; the effect is an 
effect of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute implies 
a possible existence out of all relation " (p. 39, § 13). 

No words can reveal the defect in this argument so clearly as 
Mr. Mill's plain solution : — 

" But in what manner is a possible existence out of all relation, incompatible 
with the notion of a cause? Would the sun (for example) not exist if there 
were no earth or planets for it to illuminate ? Mr. Mansel seems to think that 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 101 

what is capable of existing out of all relation, cannot possibly be conceived or 
known in relation. If the Absolute Being cannot be conceived as Cause, it must 
be that he cannot exist as Cause ; he must be incapable of causing. If he can be 
in any relation whatever to any finite thing, he is conceivable and knowable in 
that relation, if not otherwise. Freed from this confusion of Ideas, Mr. ManseVs 
argument resolves itself into this — The same Being cannot be thought by us both 
as Cause and as Absolute, because a Cause, as such, is not Absolute, and the Abso 
lute, as such, is not a Cause; which is exactly as if he had said that Newton 
cannot be thought by us both as an Englishman and as a mathematician, because 
an Englishman, as such, is not a mathematician, nor a mathematician, as such 
an Englishman." l 






Mr. Mansel's aversion to reconciling the idea of the Absolute 
with that of a Cause culminates in the following strange piece of 
reasoning : If the Absolute becomes a Cause, its effect — or the 
relative, as he terms it — cannot be a distinct reality from the 
Absolute. If it were, it would be conceived as passing from not- 
existence into existence ; but this is impossible, he sustains : — 

"For that which is conceived exists" ($ 13, p. 42). 

The vanity of this curious logic is admirably shown in the 
following clear and forcible passage: — 

" That which is conceived exists ! Can I not think of the crop of next year ? 
But it does not exist. Can I not think of the next century? Can I not think of 
all the things that Edward Bellamy describes in his strange book, "Looking 
Backward ? " Must I think of these things as already existing, or not think of 
them at all ? Can I not think of a fine crop, the best weather to form the fall 
fruit, and all that will rejoice the farmer next Autumn ? I can conceive of them 
as coming into existence, and in this there is no annihilation, as Mr. Mansel 
strangely asserts." 2 

The last part of the argument on the repugnance between the 
concepts, the Cause, the Absolute and the Infinite, is that : — 

" The Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. But here 
we are checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. How can the In- 
finite become that which it was not from the first ? " 

The Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. 
We deny this assertion. God, the Absolute, Infinite and Unchange- 

1 Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, ch. vii, pp. 118, 119. Conf. 
Bowne, The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, p. 58 et seqq., New York, 1874. 

2 Rt. Rev. John J. Keane, Herbert Spencer's First Principles : A series of Lectures 
delivered at the Catholic University of America, Lecture II, 1889. 



102 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 



able Being, decreed by an eternal decree that at a given moment the 
world should begin to exist. Unlike finite power, infinite virtue 
can act without suffering mutation. Why? Because, being infinite, 
it has in itself all that is necessary to exercise causality without 
having recourse to a superadded mutation. Such a mutation would 
be superfluous and contradictory in Him Who is the fulness of 
infinite activity. The Absolute did not become a Cause ; it was 
a cause from eternity. By virtue of its eternal causality the 
universe began at the time and moment pre-ordained in the eternal 
counsels. 

Mr. Spencer places the main weight of his philosophy on this 
alleged inter-repugnance of the Cause, the Absolute and the Infinite. 
He recurs to it with another long quotation from Mr. MansePs 
Limits of Religious Thought, and with one from Sir W. Hamilton's 
essay on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned (§ 24, pp. 74-79). 
Though these passages occur at a long distance from the passage 
we have just discussed, they are on the main a repetition in sub- 
stance of the same arguments. For instance, in the reference from 
Sir W. Hamilton, under a new form occurs the proof that the In- 
finite cannot be conceived because it " would require an infinite 
time" for the conception (p. 74). Again, the inconceivability of 
the Absolute is iterated, in the reference from Mr. Mansel, in sub- 
stantially the same presentment : — 



" To be conscious of the Absolute, as such, we must know that an object which 
is given in relation to our consciousness, is identical with one which exists in its 
own nature out of all relation to consciousness '' (p. 79). 

In other words, a consciousness of the Absolute requires that it 
enter into relation to consciousness, but the Absolute cannot enter 
into relation because it " exists in its own nature out of all relation 
to consciousness." As this argument is repeated so often by Mr. 
Mansel and urged by Mr. Spencer with equal solicitude, it deserves 
a special attention, though it has been sufficiently overthrown in 
the quotation we have given from Mr. Mill. We agree with Mr. 
Spencer that consciousness is possible only in the form of a relation. 
There is the Subject or person conscious and an Object of which 
he is conscious. The Absolute will be the object of consciousness, 
it will bear to consciousness the relation of object to subject. We 
see no difficulty in this. Why cannot the Absolute like any other 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 103 

term of thought be conceived, be related to consciousness as an 
object of knowledge ? Mr. Mansel says it cannot, and the reason 
he gives is, if we may be allowed the tiresome repetition, that the 
Absolute : — 

" Exists in its own nature out of all relation to consciousness." 

These words admit of two constructions. They may either mean 
that the Absolute exists necessarily out of all relation, or that it exists 
only possibly out of all relation. The argument requires that they 
should mean that the Absolute exists necessarily out of all relation. 
Mr. Mansel cannot intend this. In the passage we quoted from 
him in the beginning on the three conceptions, "the Cause, the 
Absolute, the Infinite " (p. 39, § 13), he states that " the conception 
of the absolute implies a possible existence out of all relation," in 
other words that it exists only possibly out of all relation. Besides, 
Mr. Mansel nowhere asserts, much less proves, that the Absolute 
exists necessarily out of all relation to consciousness. The incon- 
clusiveness of the argumentation is manifest. 

The confusion existing in the minds of Sir W. Hamilton and 
Mr. Mansel is not easily explained. It is hard to see how the 
Absolute can be identified with the Non-Relative, taking this term 
in the meaning which these writers import into it. Whatever 
exists may be apprehended by the mind, as existing, as a cause or 
an effect, as intelligent or unintelligent, etc., and inasmuch as it is 
so apprehended it is known, it is an object of knowledge. 1 We con- 
ceive God as existing, as a cause, intelligent. He is therefore an 
object of knowledge for us, and as such is related to our conscious- 
ness. How then can the term Non-relative be fittinglv applied to 
God? 

There is not a shadow of a reason, nor is any reason assigned to \ 
annex this signification to the term Absolute as an attribute of the 
Deity. Will the reason be assigned that for the Absolute to be a 
Relative — in the sense that it can be a cognized object, or a cognizing 
subject — is to suffer limitations and conditions ? This is nonsense. 
What limitations or conditions are imposed on the Absolute by 
being an object of our knowledge, by being known by you or me ? 

1 John Rickaby, S. J., General Metaphysics, p. 361, New York, Cincinnati and 
Chicago. 




104 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

His being is the same whether we know Him or not. Obversely, 
what limitations or conditions are imposed on Him by being a 
subject of knowledge, by knowing human things ? If there were 
anything He did not know, His knowledge would not be infi- 
nite. To be a cognizing subject is not only not to limit or con- 
dition the Infinite, the Absolute; on the contrary, it expresses 
one of the sublime perfections of the Unlimited, the Unconditioned 
Being. 

Mr. Spencer and Mr. Manser's difficulties were met and solved 
by the Scholastic philosophy centuries ago. The whole cause of 
Mr. Mansel and Mr. Spencer's confusion is that they cannot con- 
ceive a relation existing between God and creatures, unless such a 
relation brings with it a mutation or modification in the Divine 
Being. This is asserted again and again in the citations we adduced 
from those writers. For instance, Mr. Mansel speaks of the Abso- 
lute existing "first by itself," "and afterwards" becoming a cause; 
in other words, when the Absolute becomes a cause, it does so by 
the superaddition of some quality which it had not before — it under- 
goes a change, it receives some new modification. If this were so, 
then surely would Mr. Mansel's affirmation be true, viz., that " the 
Cause and the Absolute imply contradiction to each other." The 
Scholastic philosophy saw this difficulty, as we have said, centuries 
ago, and answered it. The answer is simply this : God is infinite, 
hence unchangeable ; when he assumes towards creatures the rela- 
tion of cause to effect, he does so without undergoing auy change. 
Creatures cannot become a cause without suffering mutation ; the 
reason is because they are imperfect, finite ; but God is infinite, per- 
fect. When he causes, he does so by virtue of his infinite power ; 
to that power nothing can be added. Because it is infinite, it can 
act without being changed ; because it is infinite, it can do all things, 
remaining unchanged, unchangeable. The Infinite Being, accord- 
ingly, can be a cause or enter into any other relation with finite 
beings without undergoing mutation. 

But the obvious difficulty suggests itself — if you say that God 
becomes a cause, do you not imply a change in him ? — The meaning 
of the phrase to become a cause, when applied to God, is that God 
existing unchanged from all eternity, produces the effect in time ; 
he is nominated a cause not from a change occurring in himself, 
but simply from the existence of the effect. He is related as 



J 



ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 105 

Cause to the effects he produces, not by reason of any change he 
suffers, but because the effects exist in virtue of his infinite causality. 
To put it in the language of the Schoolmen — God does not carry 
towards finite beings an intrinsic or real relation, i. e., a relation 
implying mutation, or change, but he does carry a logical or ex- 
trinsic relation, i. e., importing no such modification or mutation. 1 
But putting aside the meaning of the term Non-relative as above 
set down, and which Mr. Mansel affixes to the Absolute, in another 
sense the word Non-Relative has a true and existent signification. 
And it is, no doubt, the mixing of the two meanings which has 
given rise to the strange doctrine we are considering. The vocable 
Absolute in its strict philosophical and theological sense, according v 
to Scholastic and universal Catholic teaching, signifies existence I 
independent of all other existences, i. e., existence so perfect that even 
if no other being existed, it could and would exist ; such an exist- J 
ence alone is God. 2 This Scholastic definition has been accepted 
by all theistic writers and is in common use. For instance, in this 
acceptation, Webster defines it (the Absolute) : — 

" Loose from, or unconnected by dependence on any other being ; self-existent, 
self-sufficing." 3 

The Absolute, being independent in existence, is unmodified, un- 
limited, unconditioned. Contrariwise, creatures, being dependent 
on God for existence, are limited, conditioned : limited, because they 
have received from the First Cause a limited amount of being ; con- 
ditioned, because it is only on the condition that existence was im- 
parted to them by the First Cause that they exist. In this manner 
the Absolute may be defined as the Unconditioned and Non- 
Relative, because it exists independent, without any relation of 
dependence, on other beings. And the term Relative may be applied 
to all finite and conditioned beings, because their existence has a 
necessary relation of dependence on the First Cause. 

The Absolute, thus defined, manifestly applies only to God. In 
theistic philosophy, and also in common use, the term Absolute has 

1 S. Thomas, Sumrna Theol, 1, q. 13, a. 7, ad. 2, and 1, q. 34, a. 3, ad. 2, and 
1, q. 43, a. 2, ad 2. 

J Braun, Definition de V Absolu, Congres Scientifique Internationale des Catholiques, 
Bureaux des Annates de Philosophie Chretienne, torn, i, p. 405. Conf. S. Thomas, 
Summa Theol., 1, q. 44, a. 1, and 1-2, q. 6, a. 6 and passim. 

3 International Dictionary (unabr.), Springfield, Mass., 1893. 

8 



106 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

also a meaning which extends to all the beings of the universe. A 
thing may be considered in itself, as an individual, abstraction made 
of all things else, or it may be considered as a part of the world. 
Under different points of view, it is at the same time absolute and 
relative : — 

" Everything sustains both an absolute and a relative capacity ; an absolute, as 
it is such a thing, endued with such a nature ; and a relative, as it is a part of the 
Universe, and so stands in such a relation to the whole" (South). 1 

To sum up, in reply to Mr. Mansel and Mr. Spencer, the Abso- 
lute and the Relative are not opponent terms, but synonymous when 
the Absolute sustains the relations of subject and object, etc. ; they 
are, on the contrary, opposite and antithetical when the Absolute 
means — as it does in its strict metaphysical sense — independent of 
any other being, and when the Relative means subject to the relation 
of a necessary dependence. 



C 



§ 26. — Ultimate Scientific Ideas — Force, Consciousness, Life. 



Mr. Spencer passes from the Ultimate Religious Ideas to what 
he classifies as Ultimate Scientific Ideas. These he condemns with 
the Ultimate Religious, as equally unintelligible, unknowable. He 
defines Science as " a higher development of common knowledge " 
(p. 18). Consequently, Ultimate Scientific Ideas must be the ulti- 
mate or fundamental knowledge on which the structure of Science 
is superimposed. Anyhow, they are knowledge of some sort, unless 
we strip the term Scientific of all meaning. But if Ultimate Scientific 
Ideas are to be classed as knowledge, according to Mr. Spencer's very 
definition, how comes it that he devotes a special chapter to the 
demonstration that they are incomprehensible, unknowable, not 
knowledge, but its direct antithesis ? Apart from this, leaving our 
author's incomprehensible, unknowable use of terms in the mystery 
in which he enshrines them, is it true that Force, Consciousness, Life 
are indwellers of the land of Nescience, beyond all human ken ? 

Force, Mr. Spencer conceives as " an affection of consciousness n 
(§ 18, p. 58). He gives the following demonstration of its unin- 
telligibleness. If we lift a chair, the force we exert is equal and 
antagonistic to the force called the weight of the chair. Whence, 
he infers, the force existing in the chair is similar in nature to the 

1 Webster, edit, quoted, word Relative. 



ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 107 

force existing within us. The force existing within us, is merely 
" an affection of consciousness." For this reason, we cannot con- 
ceive the force in the chair "without endowing the chair with 
consciousness." This conclusion, however, is absurd, and the only 
rational inference to be held is that force is to us an unknowable 
quantity (p. 58). 

The first fallacy in this ratiocination is that force is an affection 
inherent in consciousness. Consciousness is not force but simply 
reports the existence of force within us. 1 Force is the latent power 
which originates in our will, and gives that muscular tension and 
power which neutralize the antagonizing resistance felt in the 
chair. This is a matter of universal experience ; we all feel that, 
by an act of our volition, we can communicate to our limbs strength 
and effort to conquer resistance. In this experience three distinct 
elements manifest themselves to analysis. First, there is the act of 
volition to which we appeal to impart force to the limbs or muscles 
we wish to exercise ; secondly, there is the imparting of the force 
from the treasures of the will, to the place to which it is directed ; 
thirdly, there is the force in exercise, and as a resultant the con- 
sciousness of it. Mr. Spencer confuses the force exerted and the 
consequent consciousness ; he identifies antecedent with result, cause 
with effect. 

Having dissipated this fallacy of the identification of conscious- 
ness with force, we readily see that the conclusiveness of the argu- 
ment crumbles and falls. There is no need to endow the chair 
" with consciousness," and force discloses itself to us in the resist- 
ance of the chair and in our opposing muscular resistance and 
tension. It is true that these battling resistances are not force 
itself; they are its manifestations, they are its effects ; and as such 
they reveal its existence as the causal virtue and energy made mani- 
fest in them. This is our knowledge of force ; we know it in the 
revelations of its effects, and we are conscious of it because we are 
conscious and feel and know as a first principle of our existence — 
which Mr. Spencer will not disown — that for every effect there is 
postulated the existence of its cause. 

This issue naturally leads us to Mr. Spencer's conception of Con- 
sciousness. All will agree that consciousness is the perception of 

1 Crozier, op. cit., p. 185. Conf. Martineau, Science, Nescience and Faith, op. tit., 
p. 208. 



/ 




108 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

the impressions and feelings which each one experiences in himself. 1 
If any man denies or calls in question the existence of those im- 
pressions and experiences, he by the very fact exiles from himself 
all knowledge and all truth. Such a denial would be, as Descartes 
observed, to cut the foundations from all philosophy. Mr. Spencer 
reasons as follows : — 

" Belief in the reality of self is, indeed, a belief which no hypothesis enables 
us to escape" (§ 20, p. 64). 

Very true, but hear what follows : — 

" It is yet a belief admitting of no justification by reason ; nay, indeed, it is a 
belief which reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects." 

We should expect that the writer of such an assertion would dis- 
continue to philosophize. Even Mr. Mansel would not countenance 
such sweeping destruction. Mr. Spencer may be put the question : 
if the Belief in the reality of self is to be rejected by reason, does he, 
when he makes this assertion, believe that he himself makes it, or 
does he not believe it? And does he believe that he makes it 
reasonably ? If he believes that he makes the assertion, and be- 
lieves that it is a reasonable assertion, by the very fact he admits 
" the reality of self," and admits it as a reasonable belief. If he 
does not believe that he makes the assertion, and that it is not 
reasonable, he tells us ipso facto to reject it. And what w 7 e have 
said of this particular assertion may be similarly said of everything 
Mr. Spencer has uttered. So that he encircles himself in the curi- 
ous contradiction of having us buy a book which he advises us on 
logical grounds to repudiate. 

But let us look at the arguments, which, according to our author, 
press reason to reject this fundamental belief. He speaks as fol- 
lows : — 

" The fundamental condition to all consciousness, emphatically insisted upon 
by Mr. Mansel in common with Sir William Hamilton and others, is the anti- 
thesis of subject and object. . . . The mental act in which self is known, implies 
like every other mental act, a perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, 
then, the object perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives ? or if it is 
the true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of. Clearly 
a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and known are 
one — in which subject and object are identified ; and this Mr. Mansel rightly 
holds to be the annihilation of both" (§ 20, p. 65). 

1 Pesch, Institutiones Logicales, Part ii, lib. i, p. 158, St. Louis, Mo., 1S8S. 



ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 109 

This is an argument well reasoned out and led to a logical and 
true conclusion, viz., " a true cognition of self implies a state in 
which the knowing and known are one." But when he resumes, 
" and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both," 
we ask on whose authority we have to accept this statement ? on 
Mr. Mansel's or Mr. Spencer's? We demand something more 
than any man's authority here. Not all the ipse dixits of all the 
philosophers will suffice in this grave matter. A statement fraught 
with such grave consequences needs demonstration of the most 
cogent character. Mr. Spencer well asserts that in self-cognition 
" the knowing and known are one," still, in the same breath, he 
wishes us to believe that Mr. Mansel is right in asserting the opposite. 

The confusion in Mr. Spencer's vacillating metaphysics, and in 
those of his teachers, is found in their explanation of the antithesis 
of subject and object. They believe — Mr. Spencer forgets to tell 
us why — that the subject and object must necessarily be distinct 
entities. The subject, in general, is that which does the action ; 
the object is that on which the action is done. The subject of cog- 
nition is that which knows, or the thinking faculty ; the object is 
that which is known. Now what objection is there to the same 
person being both the subject knowing and the object known, or in 
other words, what repugnance is there in self-cognition ? Clearly, 
the subject, as such, is not the object ; the object, as such, is not 
the subject; but this distinction simply indicates that the term 
subject expresses a quality of the person of whom it is predicated, 
which the word object does not express ; and, vice versa, that the 
word object mentions a property not contained in the vocabulum 
subject These properties are not contradictory and, consequently, 
are not repugnant in the same individual. If it were said that 
the subject of cognition knew and did not know at the same time ; 
or that the object was known and unknown simultaneously, a con- 
tradiction would be established. To know and not to know are 
contradictories, and incompatible in the same person ; to be known 
and to be unknown betray a like incompatibility. To know and to 
be known, that is to be the subject and object of knowledge, present 
no such incompatibility in one and the same individual being. 

If it be opposed to reason to say that a man can know himself, 
a like opposition must be found in asserting that a man can talk 
about himself, can tire himself, can refresh himself, etc., etc. A 



110 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

well-known and popular writer exemplifies the matter very strik- 
ingly. He says : — 

" Just as he (Mr. Spencer) tries to show the impossibility of self-knowledge, 
let us try to show the impossibility of self-love. We might say — ' The funda- 
mental condition of all love is the antithesis of subject and object. If, then, the 
object loved be self, what is the subject that loves ? Or if it be the true self that 
loves, what other self can it be that is loved ? Self-love implies the identity of 
subject and object ; but, by hypothesis, they must always be different ; therefore 
no man can love himself.' Now, since in point of fact most persons do love them- 
selves, there is manifestly something wrong about this argument." * 

Mr. Spencer's views on the definition of Life put him ashore on 
not less patent absurdities. He looks on life, in its triple form of 
vegetation, sense and intelligence, as the correspondence which 
exists between the changes which occur in the living being, and the 
changes which occur without it, when these changes are intercon- 
nected. By way of illustration, vegetal vitality would be made 
up chiefly of chemic changes " responding to the co-existence of 
light, heat, water and carbonic acid around it " (§ 25, p. 83). And 
to come to sensible — the same may be said of rational life — what 
are those actions by which the hunter pursues his prey : — 

"But certain changes in the organism fitted to meet certain changes in the 
environment?" (§ 25, p. 83). 

Hence the following definition : — 

" Life is definable as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external 
relations" (p. 84). 

We are happy to agree with Mr. Spencer that wherever we find 
life, there we find a correspondence between the vital acts and ex- 
ternal agents ; but it by no means follows from this that life consists 
in this correspondence. Steam is generated by the action of heat, 
and wherever steam exists, there arises a correspondence between it 
and the calorific action. Shall we, therefore, define steam as the 
continuous adjustment of the relation existing in the steam to the 
relation in the calorific principle external to it,? Nor shall the 
reply avail that in Life the relations are complex, whereas in the 
example offered they are simple. For, if we take a watch or a 
steam-engine, the relations are most complex : the relations of the 

1 Prof. Momerie, Belief in God, p. 44, 3 ed., Edinburgh and London, 1891. Conf. 
Agnosticism, pp. 38-44, by same author, op. cit. 



ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. Ill 

parts of a watch, for instance, are very numerous, and they are so 
inter-related as to adjust themselves continually — provided the 
watch keep good time — so as to correspond with the diurnal revo- 
lutions of the sun. Here truly we find : — 

" A continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." 

Still I do not think Mr. Spencer would venture to endow the watch 
with life. There is an elementary principle in that part of Logic 
which treats of Definitions — that the definition must not be more 
general than the thing defined. Mr. Spencer's definition is so gen- 
eral that it will make watches, steam-engines, houses, bridges and 
an infinity of other things all alive. A very generous act, no doubt ; 
but, unfortunately, he- will find few people to appreciate it. Does 
not the following rebuke seem merited ? — 



"It professes to be a definition of life, but really leaves life wholly out of account, 
in order to facilitate the work incumbent on a materialistic philosophy." x 



By way of corollary from this definition, Mr. Spencer describes 
cognition as : — 

" The establishment of some connexion between subjective states and objective 
agencies" (p. 85). 

This Mr. Mill explains as an affirmation tl that for every propo- 
sition we can truly assert about the similitudes, successions and 
co-existences of our states of consciousness, there is a corresponding 
similitude, succession and co-existence, really obtaining among nou- 
mena beyond our consciousness, and even that we can have experi- 
ence of the same." And he is astonished that so able a defender 
of the Agnostic position should admit " this prodigious amount of 
knowledge respecting the Unknowable." Besides recognizing " this 
prodigious amount of knowledge respecting the Unknowable" — 
about which we have no knowledge at all — how does our author 
come to discover that there are corresponding similitudes and 
changes in the objective agencies — that is, in the Unknowable? 
He tells us in the next page that for " every effect " produced in 
our consciousness, there exists a corresponding " property " in the 
Unknowable. How does he certify this? No certification is offered. 

1 Flint, Anii-theistic Theories, p. 504, ed. cit. Conf. Crozier, The Religion of the 
JButure, ed. cit., p. 191, and Birks, Modern Physical Fatalism, p. 273, 2 ed., Lon- 
don, 1882. 



■j 



112 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

JSTor can it be offered in view of the neutralizing statement that 
the Unknowable is devoid of all properties, " the abstract of all 
thoughts, ideas or conceptions" (§ 26, p. 95). 

§ 27. — The Relativity of All Knowledge. 

The sequelae, drawn by Mr. Spencer with the aid of Sir W. 
Hamilton and Mr. Mansel from the incomprehensibleness of Ulti- 
mate Religious and Scientific Ideas, are : 1. Phenomena alone are 
knowable ; 2. The existence represented by the Ultimate Ideas is 
unknowable, inconceivable. This creed they call the Relativity of 
Knowledge, the doctrine of the Relativity of all Knowledge. We 
have examined the grounds on which this doctrine is built. It is 
proper now to look at it as it stands. And, firstly, we will look at 
Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. ManseFs presentment. They tell us we 
know the sole phenomenal, that we ourselves and the whole uni- 
verse of things are phenomena, mere manifestations of the Absolute 
(p. 74, § 24). They also tell us that : " the Absolute is conceived 
merely by a negation of conceivability " (p. 74). That: "the 
Absolute and the Infinite, are thus like the Inconceivable and the 
Imperceptible, names indicating not an object of thought or of 
consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the conditions under 
which consciousness is possible " (Ibid.). Still Sir W. Hamilton 
adds that " by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very 
consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative 
and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something 
unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality" 
(§ 26, p. 92). 

And Mr. Mansel iterates the same : " we are compelled by the 
constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute 
and Infinite Being" (Ibid.). Man and the Universe, like the 
Berkeleyan matter, are simply phenomena, with an illusory exist- 
ence, an illusory individuality ! The only thing real about us is 
that we are appearances of a Being which we cannot conceive nor 
think, of a Being so unreal and so absurd that when we try to 
conceive it, we conceive " a negation of conceivability," " not an 
object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere absence 
of the conditions under which consciousness is possible." 



THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 113 

The strangeness of this doctrine is heightened by the declaration 
that this strange Being which to consciousness is the negation of 
existence, to belief is positive existence, in fact the only real and 
true existence ! And that " we are compelled by the constitution 
of our minds " to admit it as such, in other words, " we are com- 
pelled by the constitution of our minds to believe " that which by 
the constitution of the same minds we are compelled to deny, as 
repugnant and contradictory to the very laws of thought ! 

Mr. Spencer also admits the phenomenal character of all knowl- 
edge. He admits with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, as 
has been said above, and we shall now put it in his own words, 
that : — " the answer of pure logic is held to be, that by the limits 
of our intelligence we are rigorously confined within the relative ; 
and that anything transcending the relative can be thought of 
only as a pure negation, or as a non-existence. " The absolute is 
conceived merely by a negation of conceivability," writes Sir W. 
Hamilton. " The Absolute and the Infinite" says Mr. Mansel, " are 
thus like the Inconceivable and the Imperceptible, names indicating 
not an object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere 
absence of the conditions under which consciousness is possible " 
(p. 87, § 26). Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel accept the doctrine 
contained in these propositions, as it stands. Not so with Mr. 
Spencer though he approvingly quotes it. He considers that the 
above definitions of the Absolute and the Infinite, viz., " negation 
of conceivability" and "absence of the conditions under which 
consciousness is possible " are " nonsense " and " simply an elabo- 
rate suicide " (p. 88). 

Mr. Spencer strives to explain this strange interpretation by the 
pronouncement that the doctrine is logically true but psychologically 
false (p. 87). This explanation entangles him in a deeper net. 
What is logically true cannot be psychologically false. There can 
be no war between our logical and psychological faculties. Such 
a radical vice in the constitution of those faculties or powers of the 
soul, is as elaborate an intellectual suicide as the antagonism, placed 
by Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, between Belief and Conscious- 
ness. Mr. Spencer cannot, therefore, escape from the pit-falls into 
which Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel hopelessly fell, by flying 
to a psychological escape. Psychological escape there is none and 




114 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

he must, with them, stand by the answer of pure logic, 1 unless he 
desires to seek other inconsistencies. 

A sample of these inconsistencies is : Mr. Spencer, desiring to 
justify his psychological escape, tells us that " every one of the 
arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated 
distinctly postulates the existence of something beyond the relative" 
(p. 88), i. e.j distinctly postulates the Absolute, as he affirms in the 
next sentence. Now, arguments are the instruments, of logic. The 
existence of the Absolute — Mr. Spencer's psychological doctrine — 
is built on arguments, is built on logic. " The answer of pure 
logic " is that the Absolute is the " negation of conceivability," 
the " absence of the conditions under which consciousness is pos- 
sible;" on the other hand, the answer of the logic on which the 
" psychological aspect " rests, is that the Absolute is a positive exist- 
ence. But it cannot be at the same time a mere negation and a 
positive existence. Mr. Spencer accepted the principles of Sir ~W. 
Hamilton and Mansel. " The answer of pure logic" reasoning 
from these principles, is that " the absolute is conceived merely by 
a negation of conceivability," etc. To be consistent, Mr. Spencer 
must accept this " answer of pure logic," however absurd it may 
be. In his position it does not seem becoming to annex to it such 
epithets as " an elaborate suicide," " nonsense " (p. 88). 



§ 28. — The Unknowable. — Its Attributes. 

Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable it is now proper in 
brief to sketch. This doctrine is, to his mind, the ultimate result 
and natural sequela from the historical and metaphysical demon- 
strations we have been examining:. With Sir W. Hamilton and 
Mr. Mansel, he is agreed that we know the sole phenomenal ; that 
the kosmos of beings, from the lowest atom of brute matter to the 
intellectual grandeur of man, are phenomena, appearances of a con- 
tradictory being called the Absolute ; that the Absolute, by the laws 
of logical deduction, is demonstrated to be to our minds a pure 
negation. Nevertheless, that it is psychologically an emphatically 



1 E. Pace, Das Relativitatsprincip in Herbert Spencer's psychologischer Entwicklungs- 
lehre, Inaugural-Dissertion zur JErlangung der philosophischen Doctorvmrde an der 
Universitat Leipzig, p. 63, Leipzig, 1891. 



THE UNKNOWABLE. 115 

positive existence, the only existence. He tells us next, he explains 
to us what this existence is : 1. We "know only certain impressions 
produced on us." These impressions we are " compelled to think 
in relation to a positive cause." This cause is one, the Absolute. 
2. Philosophy condemns the attribution of any form or limit in 
this Absolute Cause ; this makes our consciousness of it a " con- 
sciousness of the unformed and unlimited " (p. 94, § 26). 3. The 
Absolute, when set in contrast with the Relative, has real exist- 
ence. The existence of the latter is not real, but phenomenal. 
4. The Absolute is related to the Relative. 5. The Absolute 
is unknowable, is the Unknowable. 6. We must refrain from 
assigning to the Unknowable any attributes whatever. Such 
assignation is Anthropomorphism. 7. This theory is the Recon- 
ciliation of Religion, Philosophy and Science. 8. The Unknowable 
is the new God. 

Now, all that has been said hereto cuts the foundations from Mr. 
Spencer's theory which we have just expounded. The present criti- 
cism, therefore, must not be considered as necessary ; it may be, how- 
ever, useful, as it will show the doctrine as it directly presents itself 
requesting rational acceptance. Had Mr. Spencer demonstrated 
the inconceivableness of the Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas, 
the assertion of the enclosure of our knowledge within the sphere 
of impressions would be a strictly logical inference. This he has 
not done. The following statement — that we are compelled to 
think these impressions in relation to one positive cause — must also 
be viewed as baseless. It is true we must think of them in relation 
to a positive cause, but the question is : must each individual im- 
pression, or each individual set of impressions be ascribed to an 
individual separate cause, thus making as many distinct separate 
causes as their impressions or sets of impressions, or must the 
totality of impressions be ascribed to only one cause, namely the 
Absolute? Mr. Spencer means the latter. He does not tell us 
why. I feel certain impressions, v. g., I think, I am now seeing, 
hearing, standing. I feel, I am conscious that these actions and 
impressions are mine and that they belong to nobody else. I am 
the cause of them and of a thousand other things. So is every 
other man. This truth is so self-evident that we should deem a 
man utterly wrong in his senses who would deny or question it. 
We are each of us conscious that we are distinct separate causes of 



I 



116 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

distinct separate effects. Therefore there is not one cause of the 
universe of impressions, but causes many and various. The one 
Absolute sole Cause is without foundation. 

The next proposition is that philosophy repudiates the assignment 
of any form or limit to this one Absolute Cause. We have dissi- 
pated the doctrine of the submersion of all causes into the one 
Absolute Cause. Let us suppose, however, the Pantheistic propo- 
sition of the all-identifying one Absolute causal Existence, does 
philosophy negative the predication of forms and limits in it? 
Does true philosophy condemn the attachment of any form or 
limit to the Absolute, and what do we mean by the assertion? or 
rather let us hear Mr. Spencer explain what he means by it : — 

" Though Philosophy condemns successively each attempted conception of the 
Absolute — though it proves to us that the Absolute is not this, nor that, nor that 
— though in obedience to it we negative, one after another, each idea as it arises ; 
yet, as we cannot expel the entire contents of consciousness, there ever remains 
behind an element which passes into new shapes. The continual negation of each 
particular form and limit, simply results in the more or less complete abstraction 
of all forms and limits ; and so ends in an indefinite consciousness of the unformed 
and unlimited" (p. 94). 

He proceeds : — 

" This consciousness is not the abstract of any one group of thoughts, ideas or 
conceptions, but it is the abstract of all thoughts, ideas or conceptions. That 
which is common to them all and cannot be got rid of, is what we predicate by 
the word existence. Dissociated as this becomes from each of its modes by the 
perpetual change of those modes, it remains as an indefinite consciousness of 
something constant under all modes — of being apart from its appearances " (p. 95). 

This "being apart from its appearances " is the Absolute (p. 96). 
Mr. Spencer, as we have remarked, will not follow Sir W. Hamil- 
ton and Mr. Mansel in negativing each idea of the Absolute to the 
extent of making it " a negation of conceivability." He must have 
it positive. Consequently he descends from all particular thoughts, 
and he finds, by means of successive abstractions, that the ultimate 
element common to them all is "being" indefinite being. This 
ultimate element he then declares the Absolute. We happily agree 
with Mr. Spencer that the common ultimate element in all our 
thoughts is the idea of " indefinite being." The notion of being is 
the central element in all thoughts and ideas ; every other notion the 
mind can abstract from, the notion of being it cannot. Mr. Spencer, 



THE UNKNOWABLE. 117 

therefore, is right and in full accord with the Schoolmen, in making 
being the essence of all thought, and the one universal element 
resident in it. But does it follow that this concept of abstract 
indefinite being is the concept of the Absolute ? A moment's pause 
will show it is not. In the citations made above the Absolute is 
described as the Absolute Cause, and Mr. Spencer is continually 
telling us it is the Ultimate Cause. The issue is, are the two con- 
cepts the Absolute First Cause, and the bare notion of being identical ? 
Assuredly not ; the first adds to the notion of being the notion of 
a First Cause. The concept of being and the concept of being + 
a First Cause are not the same. Or to put it another way, the 
" indefinite consciousness of the unformed and unlimited " is not the 
equivalent of the consciousness of a being -j- the form of a First 
Cause. 

The next point of doctrine is that the Absolute, when contrasted 
with the relative, has real existence, whereas the latter's existence 
is only phenomenal. The reason assigned is that our consciousness 
of the Absolute, i. e. y of the unformed and unlimited, or indefinite 
being, is the unchangeable element in all thought, all other thoughts 
being changeable. The sense of this proposition is that the con- 
ception of being, as has already been remarked, is found in all 
thinking, that, on the one hand, no thought can exist which has not 
in it this element, whereas, on the other, it can be in the cogitative 
action, when all other elements of thought have disappeared. In 
this manner it appears as the unchangeable constituent of thought, 
and other thoughts manifest themselves as changeable, variable. 
But what has this to do with Absolute or Relative Existence? 
Will the fact that the idea of mere being is the ultimate element in 
thought, when all the others are removed by abstraction, endow it 
with Absolute Existence? The notion of abstract being in the 
mind and the existence of such a being out of the mind are two 
things different altogether. And Mr. Spencer's proposition comes 
to this, the notion of being is the common element in all thinking, 
therefore it exists. Common element or not, it still remains a 
mental element, and the weakness remains, viz., the mere fact that 
a concept exists in the mind does not establish the existence of an 
object out of the mind. And this is true no matter how the concept 
exists mentally. 



118 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Again, if it be true that, because the percept of Being is the 
essential ingredient of all thought, that therefore it must exist, how- 
will it be when we don't think ? If it exists because, when we 
think, we must think of it, why should it not cease to exist when 
we cease to think of it? Surely objective existence is no inference 
from the mere fact of mental existence. Further, the notion of the 
Absolute as a First Cause is changeable ; it can be banished from 
thought like the rest of our changeable thoughts. We can abstract 
from the elements " First " and " Cause," and we do so when we 
conceive pure being. What, then, becomes of the Absolute First 
Cause? It has become a relative, phenomenal, its objective existence 
has vanished. 

And again, existence and being are confounded by Mr. Spencer. 
The ultimate element in all thought is not existence, but being, viz., 
whatever is apt to exist, whether it exists or no. 1 If actual exist- 
ence were the ultimate mental element, whatever would be conceived 
would include it. A thousand things may be conceived, however, 
which have no actual existence. For example, a a mountain of 
gold," " the Spaniards' El Dorado." And what would the poet, 
the novelist do, what would any of the arts or sciences without the 
unexistent ideal to contemplate and to copy from ? There are two 
kinds of being, actual being and possible being. Actual being is 
existence, possible being is the possibility of existence. This con- 
fusion of " being " and " existence " is made in plain terms by Mr. 
Spencer. We transcribe his description of the consciousness of the 
ultimate element : — 

" It is the abstract of all thoughts, ideas or conceptions. That which is com- 
mon to them all, and cannot be got rid of, is what we predicate by the word 
existence" (p. 95). 

This "abstract of all thoughts, ideas or conceptions," this ulti- 
mate element, is, not existence but being, and the argument falls as 
useless and illusory. 

Furthermore, relative or phenomenal existence, as conceived by 
Mr. Mansel and adopted by Mr. Spencer, " is but a name for the 
several ways in which objects are presented to our consciousness " 
(p. 78, § 24). We and the universal kosmos are relatives or phe- 

1 John Kickaby, S. J., General Metaphysics, p. 21, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago. 



THE UNKNOWABLE. 119 

nomena, we are mere manners of presentations before consciousness, 
i. e.j we are mere acts of consciousness, mere modes of thought. 
These thoughts or states of consciousness, being purely mental 
entities, are made up of purely mental elements also. Mr. Spencer 
obtains th'e ultimate element in question, by abstracting it from the 
"thoughts, ideas and conceptions" which, we have said, constitute 
relative existence. It is " that which is common to them all," and, 
as it is common to them all, it is a part of them, it remains relative, 
it cannot enter into the sphere of the Absolute. 1 

Mr. Spencer is hopelessly encircled in relative existence. There 
is no egress for him to cross the bridge to the Absolute, the extra- 
mental. He confounds abstract being and actual existence, the 
phenomenal and the Absolute, the common element of thought and 
its objective reality. The climax of this entanglement is found in 
a later Essay in the following words : " Since an ultimate analysis 
brings us everywhere to alternative impossibilities of thought, we 
are shown that beyond the phenomenal order of things our ideas of 
possible and impossible are irrelevant." 2 — Our ideas of possible and 
impossible are prior to our ideas of existence and non-existence. 
For a thing to exist it must be possible; the impossible cannot 
exist. So that, if beyond the phenomenal order of things our ideas 
of possible and impossible are irrelevant, whatever ratiocination we 
build on those ideas, affecting our consciousness of existence, must 
be also irrelevant. By way of example, Mr. Spencer reasons, with 
respect to the existence of the Absolute, that its persistence in con- 
sciousness " under successive conditions necessitates a sense of it as 
distinguished from the conditions and independent of them." This 
distinction from the conditions, this independence of them are the 
endowments of the Absolute, and as such they are absolute, extra- 
mental, " beyond the phenomenal order of things." But are they 
possible or impossible ? The reply must be, we do not know, for 
beyond the phenomenal order our ideas of possible are irrelevant. 
And, if we cannot know whether they are possible or no, we cannot 
know whether they belong to the Absolute or no, and the affirma- 
tion that we have a consciousness or sense of the existence of the 
Absolute "as distinguished from conditions and independent of 
them " becomes, as far as we are concerned, chimerical. 

1 E. Pace, op. cit., p. 64. 2 Retrogressive Religion, Nineteenth Century, July, 1884. 



120 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Finally, let it be allowed for the nonce that this Absolute exists. 
What can be said about it ? We have an indefinite consciousness, 
but not knowledge, that it is pure existence, and the if abstract 
of all thoughts, ideas and conceptions." We know not whether 
it is possible or impossible, necessary or unnecessary, eternal or 
temporal, to be adored or to be mocked, whether it is higher 
or lower than we. We cannot reason about it ; any predica- 
tion we make must be irrelevant. It is cut off from the laws 
of thought. It is insulated like an electric current with a noli 
me tangere placarded on its mysterious envelope. Mr. Spencer 
will allow us an indefinite consciousness of it, a vague feeling 
of nude existence forever unknowable and unknown, a perfect 
stranger to us, the only thing we ever heard of which is in 
every sense a mystery ! 

The next pronouncement for our consideration is that this Abso- 
lute is related to the Relative. We are told that " the Relative is 
itself inconceivable, except as related to a real Non-relative" (p. 96). 
The Absolute, the Non-relative is related to the Relative, i. e., it is 
reduced to the term of a relation, it becomes a relative. The Non- 
relative turns out to be a relative in disguise, it is absolute no 
more, and, as Dr. Martineau says, its alleged unknowableness is 
discharged ! * 

The incoherence of this strange doctrine dissolves Mr. Spencer's 
next affirmation that the Absolute is forever unknowable and un- 
known. This is manifest, even in Mr. Spencer's definition of 
Knowledge and Nescience, which confines knoiuledge to the relative 
or phenomenal, and nescience to what is latent under phenomena. 
For, the Relative being the object of knowledge, if the Non- 
relative becomes a relative, ipso facto, it becomes knowable and 
known. Apart from this, Mr. Spencer's attribution of causality to 
the Absolute entitles it to rank as knowledge. For it has been 
demonstrated by historic evidence and by the witness of a cloud 
of testimonies that, Mr. Spencer's partition of the territories of 
Knowledge and Nescience is a violation of the definitions. 

Besides, Realism has at all times designated the apprehension of a 
cause from its effects by the word knowledge. How do you know the 
cause exists ? Realism replies, by its effects. Do you know what 

1 Science, Nescience and Faith, op. cit., p. 198. 



THE UNKNOWABLE AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 121 

the cause is in itself? I do not, it makes answer, I simply know 
that to produce the effect, it must exist and must have the virtue 
proportionate to the effect produced. 1 Mr. Spencer upholds this 
same doctrine and by it declares that the Absolute is the Ultimate 
Cause. The Realist and he are one in the doctrine. The Realist 
with all mankind calls it knowledge, 2 Mr. Spencer calls it Nescience. 
We do not object to a difference in name, but we do object to Mr. 
Spencer's use of the term Nescience, as opposed, not in name but 
in reality, to the word Knowledge. 

The assignation to the Unknowable of any attributes is anthro- 
pomorphic, akin to the anthromorphism of a Personal God. Here 
is the reason set down : — 

" And may we not, therefore, rightly refrain from assigning to it (the Unknow- 
able) any attributes whatever on the ground that such attributes, derived as they 
must be from our natures, are not elevations but degradations. Indeed it seems 
somewhat strange that men should suppose the highest worship to lie in assimi- 
lating the object of their worship to themselves" (p. 109, § 31). 

It is indeed true, the tendencies towards investing the Deity with 
a human shape have, at all times, greatly prevailed among the human 
race. The Greeks were instinctively an anthropomorphic nation ; 
their Gods, in the condemnatory language of Aristotle, were naught 
"save eternal men." 3 The assimilation of God to the likeness of 
animals was an error that flourished in Egypt, and we find the 
Israelites cautioned against it in the law of Moses, v. g., in the 
Second Commandment. One of the early heresies of the Christian \ 
Church took its rise from the attempted introduction of the anthro- | 
pomorphic inclination, and was branded with the condemnatory 
title of "Anthropomorphism." 

The dictum of Heraclitus was not at that time without its point, 
" men are mortal Gods, and the Gods immortal men." In a similar 
strain, said Xenophanes, if horses and oxen and lions were able 
to paint they would picture the Gods like themselves. Spinoza's 
reproduction of this sneer is almost identical : it is, that if a circle 
could think it would suppose the essence of the Deity to be circu- 
larity. Goethe speaks more profoundly, " man never knows how 
anthropomorphic he is." 

1 Aristotle, op. cit. 7 Book i, ch. iii, p. 12 and passim. 

2 Max Miiller, Why I am not an Agnostic, Nineteenth Century, p. 892, Dec, 1894. 

3 op. til, Book ii, ch. ii, p. 62. 

9 






122 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION 



The anthropomorphic tendency, viz., the humanization of the 
Divine, is certainly within us. Mr. Spencer is right, men must not 
assimilate " the object of their worship to themselves." To shape 
the Divinity in a body, to fit in him a human mind, or a human 
will, or a human personality, is to anthropomorphize Him. But 
is this accusation of Mr. Spencer against existent Theism, a merited 
charge, is it grounded on fact ? It assuredly is, if Theism clothes 
the Divine Being in the attributes mentioned above. Theism, 
however, denies the charge ; it confesses and teaches that God must 
have mind and will and personality, but it denies that this mind 
must be a human mind, this will a human will, this personality a 
human personality, yea, it says that they must be the very opposites 
of human. And it retorts on Mr. Spencer that it is rather he at 
whose door the imputation may be laid. It recalls that it was 
Protagoras, the Greek protagonist of modern Agnosticism, who 
first uttered the famous agnostic axiom, " man is the measure of all 
things," thereby reducing all things to a purely human standard 
and likeness. Mr. Spencer applies this principle to the letter. He 
declares, in his reply to Dr. Martineau, as follows : — " If then I 
have to conceive evolution as caused by an originating Mind, I 
must conceive this Mind akin to the only mind, I know, and with- 
out which I cannot conceive mind at all." l 

Again, according to the same Protagorean measure, he avers that 
it is impossible for us to conceive a Deity save as some " idealization 
of ourselves," and this in all creeds. 2 And this same assimilating of 
the divine attributes to the human pervades all the current agnostic 
and anti-theistic literature of the day. Such men as Messrs. 
Huxley and Tyndall, Matthew Arnold and the Author of Natural 
Religion, Lange, Strauss and Du Bois-Reymond are to be charged 
with it. 3 Theism, then, seems to have proved the anthropomorphic 
accusation against Agnosticism. This, however, will stand only 
in the hypothesis that a mind and personality unlike our own are 
capable of being conceived. This the theist maintains. Immediate 



1 Popular Science Monthly, July, 1872. 

2 Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative, vol. i ; The Use of Anthropomorphism, 
p. 446, ed. cit. 

3 Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, p. 27, London and New York, IS 89 ; 
F. Strauss, The Old Faith and the New, vol. i, p. 136 and seqq., 3d Eng. ed., Lon- 
don, 1874. 



THE UNKNOWABLE AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 123 

knowledge of mind other than his own he allows he has not. He 
admits, too, that human mental power is found only in connection 
with a cerebral apparatus, but he denies that it is this apparatus 
that thinks and acts. 1 He is agreed with Prof. Tyndall that for 
every fact of consciousness, "a definite molecular condition of 
motion or structure is set up in the brain." 2 This with him is a 
case of empirical association, a law of co-ordinate action regulating 
the dependence of the mind of man on the material mechanism, with 
which it is copulated in its present existence. But, he argues, con- 
sciousness, thought is a purely mental action without any alloy in 
its make-up from the material, and on this ground does not essen- 
tially need the material for its existence. In other words, if human 
thought needs a material instrument, it needs it not as thought, but 
as human thought, i. e., because of its material alliance in the human 
composite. 3 It says in brief: thought as such is independent of 
matter, therefore it can exist independent of matter. Such an exist- 
ence is the Divine Mind, Who — as Christian Theology teaches — is 
a Pure Spirit, without corporeal parts and passions. And this 
surely is not anthropomorphism but its direct antithesis. 

However, it is with Mr. Spencer the burden of the proof lies, 
he it is who accuses. Still, in the several pages which occupy the 
charge of theistic anthropomorphism, Mr. Spencer fails to adduce 
any reason, why the alleged anthropomorphic attributes of the 
Infinite Being should be derived " from our nature." It is incum- 
bent on him to make good, why mind, will, personality, disengaged 
from matter and mortality, should be similar to the same properties 
associated with mortality, i. e., why a Personal God, the Living 
Being, who is not, like man, bounded by any bodily organism, 4 
should be the anthropomorphous expression of our personality 
which implies mortality. 

Mr. Spencer bids us to refrain from predicating any kind of 
intelligence, will or personality, because, perhaps, there is something 
higher than these in the Unknowable (p. 109). This does not 

1 The Duke of Argyll, The Unity of Nature, ch. v, p. 203, London and New 
York, 1884. 

8 Scientific Materialism, op. cit., p. 419. 

3 Martineau, Religion as affected by Modern Materialism, with Modern Materialism : 
its Attitude towards Theology, part ii, pp. 59 sqq., 6th ed., London, 1878. Conf. 
V. Tymms, The Mystery of God, p. 70, 2nd ed., New York, 1887. 

4 Tymms, op. cit., p. 73. 



124 



AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 




very well accord with the teaching that the Unknowable is pure, 
abstract Existence and nothing besides. He states that there is, 
perhaps, something higher than person or mind. Mr. Spencer does 
not call in question the principle of contradiction; he will not, 
therefore, deny the proposition that whatever exists is intelligent or 
unintelligent. There is no mean. When, therefore, Mr. Spencer 
affirms that there is, perhaps, something higher than intelligence in 
the Unknowable, he equivalently states that the unintelligent is, 
perhaps, higher than the intelligent, that that which acts blindly is 
higher, perhaps, than that which acts intelligently, that brute force 
V is, perhaps, higher than mind. Such a doctrine needs no refutation. 
In the present state of Theology and Metaphysics, enlightened 
and illumined by the Christian and Israelitic Revelation on the 
one hand, and the new Apocalypse of nature, revealed in the Natural 
Science of to-day, on the other, anthropomorphism is of the effete 
and exploded past. We maintain that God is a Spirit, incorporeal, 
without a body or a brain ; that He is pure, perfect Intelligence 
and Will ; to Whom we are like as intelligent and free, unlike as 
Finite, He being the Infinite. 1 Theism places Him all above us, for 
the noblest thing is Infinite Mind. Agnosticism refuses Him this 
noblest endowment and, by the very refusal, places Him all below 
For if Mind be noblest, its antipodal extreme, Blind Force, 



us. 



must be lowest. The charge of Anthropomorphism, then, falls ; 
falls historically, it is not a theological tenet ; falls philosophically, 
the philosophic concepts of the human and the divine attributes 
are set together not as assimilated but dissimilar. Not Anthro- 
pomorphism but Non-anthropomorphism is the endowment of a 
Personal God. 



§ 29. — The Unknowable as the Reconciliation of Religion, Science 
and Philosophy. 

I The creed of the Unknowable is next advanced as the Reconcilia- 
I tion of Religion, Science and Philosophy. It is the Reconciliation 
of Religion and Science, we are apprised, because it is " the most 
abstract truth contained in Religion and the most abstract truth 
contained in Science" (§ 8, p. 23), the verity common to the two. 
Science, i. e., the family of the Sciences, " stands for nothing more 



1 S. Thomas, Summa Theoi, 1, q. 13, a. 3 and a. 5. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE: THEIR RECONCILIATION. 125 

than the sum of knowledge formed of their contributions, and 
ignores the knowledge constituted by the fusion of all these contri- 
butions into a whole." It remains for Philosophy to unify them, 
" Philosophy is completely-unified knowledge " (p. 134, § 38). And 
the expression of this unification is the Law of Involution. As in 
the case of Science and Religion, similarly is it with Religion and 
Philosophy, the transcendent existence of the Unknowable is the 
ultimate truth which each has in common (§ 191, p. 551). 

There is a fundamental harmony between Religion, Science and 
Philosophy. They each express different orders of verities. It 
will consequently make a very strong antecedent probability in 
support of his religious view, if Mr. Spencer has success in estab- 
lishing a common harmonious basic principle, on which may be 
reared the three great sister temples of Religion, Science and 
Philosophy. The Unknowable is the Reconciliation of Religion 
and Science because it is the truth contained in each of them. 
This proposition supposes that Religion and Science are contrasted 
as Knowledge and Nescience ; this, however, has been shown to be 
historically false. In addition, if we allow the contrast that Re- 
ligion is Nescience and Science Knowledge, where can a common 
element enter ? It must be unknowable as the object of Religion, and 
knowable as the object of Science. And to tell Mr. Spencer that the 
Unknowable of Religion is scientifically Knowable, would be to 
speak rank heresy to his ears. Obversely, if Science be Knowledge, 
ultimate scientific ideas, to be scientific, must be known. 1 Mr. 
Spencer devotes a whole chapter (Chapter iii, p. 46-67) to the thesis 
that they are unknowable, i. e., that they are not scientific but 
religious. Mr. Spencer's " Ultimate Scientific Ideas," Mr. Spen- 
cer's Science, is Religion in disguise; Mr. Spencer's Religion is 
Science in disguise. They are not separate, but confused ; not 
living in distinct domains, but each becoming a subject of the 
other, according as it pleases her to pass over into the other's country. / 
The confusion of this vacillating definition makes itself felt at once. 
If the Unknowable be the ultimate Scientific verity, it must be one 
of the objects of Science. But Religion claims the Unknowable as 
proper exclusively to itself. A quarrel at once ensues ; Reconcilia- 
tion is lost, Disharmony has prevailed. 

1 M. Guthrie, On Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution, p. 177, London, 1879. 



126 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

The existence of the Unknowable Cause is also the common 
Religious and Philosophical constituent. In this way, Philosophy- 
is the complete unification of Knowledge. This unified Knowledge 
is supplied by the Formula of Evolution. Mr. Spencer's pro- 
nouncement, of a consequence, issues in this : is the Theory of 
Evolution connected with Religion, and how ? — The Evolutional 
Theory is ultimately based on the recognition of: "a persistent 
Force, ever changing its manifestations, but unchanged in quantity 
throughout all past time and future time." And it is this recogni- 
tion of a persistent Force, in other words, of the Unknowable, 
which " alone makes possible each concrete interpretation, and at 
last unifies all concrete interpretations" (§ 191, p. 552). Briefly, 
both agree in the recognition of the Unknowable. 

Philosophy is Knowledge, Religion, Nescience ; how is it possible 
for them to have a common element ? how can Philosophy know 
the Unknowable? The same ratiocinations that we just used to 
dissolve the reconciliatory theory of Mr. Spencer's Religion and 
Science, can be applied here, and they discharge the alleged Har- 
mony. This response is decisive. But allowing that the Law of 
Evolution is the universal all-embracing expression of the mani- 
festations of the unknown persistent Force, is this formula the 
unification of all knowledge? The proposed unification is set in 
the following words : — 

"A philosophy stands self-convicted of inadequacy if it does not formulate the 
whole series of changes passed through by every existence in its passage from the 
inperceptible to the perceptible and again from the perceptible to the imper- 
ceptible" (p. 542, I 186). 

Evolution is the philosophic formula required. It formulates 
the whole cycle of changes passed through by every existence and 
is definable as : — 

"An integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; during which 
the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel trans- 
formation" (£ 145, p. 396). 

The two factors of this formula, as may be seen by its reading, 
are Matter and Motion ; in Mr. Spencer's words, it expresses (< the 
continuous redistribution of Matter and Motion." It is " a state- 
ment of the truth that the concentration of Matter implies the 



RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY: THEIR RECONCILIATION 127 

dissipation of Motion, and that conversely, the absorption of Matter 
implies the diffusion of Motion" (§ 186, p. 542). 

The problem before us is simply this : is the Law of Evolution, 
as here expounded by Mr. Spencer, the unification of all knowledge f 
To be this unification it must establish a nexus between the Kosmos 
of inorganic and organic beings, it must show that the Kosmos of 
inorganic and organic existences is a product of mere elementary 
Matter subjected under the laws of Motion, it must demonstrate that 
Mind originated from the primal Matter by a merely mechanical 
process. This is the question : how did Mind arise from Matter ? 
will Matter, moulded under the laws of Motion, explain the genesis 
of Mind? 

Mr. Spencer does not answer this question, neither can he. For, 
if mind sprung from matter and motion, it could be described in 
geometrical or mathematical terms, it could be formulated geomet- 
rically, mechanically. 1 Such formulation, however, is not compre- 
hensible. What formula will express the mental in terms of the 
physical? will unify the regions of mental and physical phenomena? 
There is an impassable chasm between them. If any one would 
like to see the chasm bridged it is Prof. Tyndall. Yet he must 
say:— 

"The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of con- 
sciousness is unthinkable. . . . We do not possess the intellectual organ, nor 
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process 
of reasoning from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not 
know why." 2 

And this is the unanimous voice of all thinkers, the sympatheti- 
cally inclined to Mr. Spencer no less than the unsympathetic. 
The first genesis of life from any material source is an insoluble 
problem. Nor will the difficulty be diminished by Mr. Spencer's 
" conception of a perfect gradation from purely physical to mental 
life." The transitus from the one to the other remains unaccounted 
for ; it is the missing link which cannot even be conceived much less 
explained. 3 Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution has proved to 
be utterly inadequate. Its two factors, Matter and Motion, have 
failed to account for Life and Consciousness. It is not the unifica- 

1 Guthrie, op. cit., p. 142. 

2 Scientific Materialism, op. cit., p. 420. 

3 Sully, Evolution, Encycl. Brit, v. viii, 9th ed., 1879. 



128 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

tion of all Knowledge, and for this reason cannot be the proposed 
Reconciliation of Religion and Philosophy. 1 

§ 30. — The Theory of the Unknowable Versus Christianity. 
Which is Scientific f 

But it is not so much the proposal of a common concordant 
ground-principle for Religion and Science, nor the advancement 
of the scheme of the unifying Synthetic Philosophy, that has given 
to Mr. Spencer's religious agnosticism the heavy weight it has in 
the eyes of his sympathizers, nor the immense amount of considera- 
tion that it has elicited from the universal heterogeneous reading 
public, friends not more than foes. It is the fact, that it is proposed 
as the product and the outcome of modern scientific research, that 
it is the last growth in the stage of human progress, routing and 
exploding Christianity and the Biblical cosmogony, and relegating 
them to the regions of obsolete religious civilization. Mr. Spencer 
has turned the eyes of the world on the question : has the Agnostic 
Evolutionary Science of the day disproved the Theism of the Bible? 
or, to put the question as expressed in the theistic view, on what 
grounds does the theory of the Evolutional God rest versus the 
God of Biblical Theism ? To put it in a nutshell, Mr. Spencer 
awoke universal interest because he proposed the Theory of Evolu- 
tion as Scientific, and scientifically annihilating the biblical theistic 
cosmogony. Now it may seem arrogant — and doubtless it will so 
seem — to some, still we do not hesitate to make the assertion that 
it is Mr. Spencer's Evolutionism which is unscientific, and that it 
is to its theistic opponent that the attribute of scientific must be 
annexed. 

To clear the brush-wood from our path some preliminary state- 
ments are essential. In its conflict with Christianity, Mr. Spencer 
and the rest of anti-theistic evolutionists take for granted that, the 
biblical creational narrative of the six days must be taken in its 
literal sense, that this is the sole sense in which it is received by 
Christian Theology, in a word, that this sense and the Christian 
Faith concerning the origin of things are identical. On this sup- 
position they build their arguments ; from it, as from a well-stocked 
arsenal, they supply the powder and ball to their guns, when they 

1 Guthrie, op. cit, p. 196. 



THE UNKNOWABLE VERSUS CHRISTIANITY. 129 

form in line against Theism. To be sure, such modes of reasoning 
are only indirect and negative as far as the establishment of their 
own position is concerned, still they make a strong bias against 
Christianity, and place it in a prejudiced light. Mr. Spencer makes 
theologians in general, without any distinction, and the sacred cos- 
mogonal theory represent the creator effecting the Kosmic genesis / 
by immediate agency, like a human artificer. By his immediate ' 
hand the " Great Artificer " fashions the primal material and forms 
the suns, and planets and satellites (pp. 34, 35). We will quote 
from an author who may be regarded in this matter as repre- 
sentative : — 

" Sacred Science as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church demonstrated 
these facts : 1. That the date of Creation was comparatively recent, not more than 
four or five thousand years before Christ; 2. That the act of Creation occupied 
the space of six ordinary days." 1 

On the next page is added : — 

" Sacred cosmogony regards the formation and modeling of the earth as the 
direct act of God, it rejects the intervention of secondary causes in those events." 

Now these assertions are utterly incorrect, and betray a very 
pronounced, a very happy un acquaintance with the theologic and 
patristic interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. Instead 
of the one sole interpretation, cited above, of the Hexahemeron or 
Six days of Creation, we discover three : the first takes them meta- 
phorically and as meaning one period of time ; the second accepts 
them literally as six common days ; the third reads them as indefinite 
periods of time. Such eminent authorities as Aristobulus, Philo, 
Clement of Alexandria (Strom., vi, 16), Origen (De Princip., 1. 4, 
16), Athanasius (Orat., 3 cont. Arian.), Gregory of Nyssa, Hilarius 
(de Trinity 12, 40) and Saint Augustine follow the first or allegorical 
exposition. The second or strict sense is received by Ephrem, 
Chrysostom, Theodoretus, Cosmas, Ambrose, the Caeserean Basil 
and others. 2 Finally the third opinion obtains among an increas- 
ing number of eminent Catholic theologians, and other Christian 
divines. 

1 Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 187, 8th ed., New York, 1882. 
Conf. Biichner, Force and Matter, p. 120, reprinted from 4th Eng. ed., New York, 
1891 ; and Tyndall, Apology for the Belfast Address, p. 548, op. cit. 

2 Corluy, Spicilegium Dogmatico-Biblicum, p. 174 seqq., torn, i, Ghent, 1 884. 




V 



130 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

Besides, anti-theistic evolution does not seem to be aware that, 
long before Kant and Herschel and La Place heralded the evolu- 
tional hypothesis, it was conceived and begotten in the mind of St. 
Augustine in his exegesis of the hexahemeron. 1 The Creator in 
the beginning, quoth he, created the shapeless matter, materiam 
informem, this is Kant's nebulous mass ; and on it, he continues, 
he impressed the potencies and laws by which, in an evolutional 
process, should be produced the physical universe of existences. 
This opinion, which is an elementary cognition to all biblical ex- 
positors, is now in great favor not only with all theologians, Prot- 
estant not less than Catholics, but also with the great majority of 
the weightiest Scientists of modern times. Pianciani, Palmieri, 
Reusch, Meiguan, Vigouroux, Molloy, J. D'Estienne, Delitzsch 2 ; 
Martineau, McCosh aod Washburne, among the theologians; 
Brewster, Faraday, Forbes, Herschel, Andrews, Joule, Clerk- 
Maxwell, Balfour Stewart, Stokes, William Thomson, Tait, Mivart, 
Dr. Guyot, Dr. Dana and Sir William Dawson, among the fore- 
most scientific thinkers, may be cited as examples. 3 And as we look 
at the names of these authorities, does not the vision they had of 
the amity of Theistic Faith and Science, shatter the assumption that 
Christianity is unscientific? Will it be said that medieval theology 
followed the literal version of Genesis ? St. Thomas, the prince of 
medieval schoolmen, states that St. Augustine's opinion has the 
greatest probability. 4 As to the scholastics who followed the literal 
sense, why, had they not a right to think as they chose? What is 
Mr. Spencer's opinion of the theologians ? has he not the liberty 
to think as he wills ? Will it be rehearsed that a body of Cardinals 
condemned Galileo ? so much the worse for the Cardinals. But it 
does not show a very liberal spirit to think that a body of Cardinals 
could not make a mistake ; it does not show much toleration not to 
allow for an error that grew out of the science of the time. Men can 
make mistakes, especially so when fearful that the glory of God is 
in peril. Scientists, forsooth, never made a blunder ! The Roman 

1 St. Augustine, De Gen. ad lit, i, 15, 29, and 4, 21, 38 ; and De Civ. Dei, ii, 6, 
7. Conf. Corluy, op. cit., torn, i, pp. 176 sqq. 
2 Corluy, op. cit., torn, i, p. 185. 

3 McCosh, Bedell Lecture, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, p. 69, New York and 
London, 1888. Conf. Atlas Series of Essays, no. ii, Science and Religion, Reply to 
Mr. Froude, by Prof. G. Tait, p. 36, New York, 1880. 

4 2 Sent., 12, 2 corp. 



AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION UNSCIENTIFIC. 131 

Catholic Church, while allowing large liberty to all, never pro- 
nounced any of the three exegetical expositions of the hexahemeron, 
as the revelation of God, as Christianity. The opinions of relig- 
ionists are not Religion, as the opinions of scientists are not Science. 1 
Bible-Christianity has never conflicted, does not conflict with 
Science. The hexahemeron harmonizes with Evolution scientifi- 
cally understood, 2 and no scriptural opinion must be represented as 
endowed with an identity with Scripture, to throw this harmony 
into disrepute. 

But does Mr. Spencer's Evolutionism merit the name " scien- 
tific ?" The sphere of Science is induction, generalization. She 
occupies herself with the laws which are made manifest by experi- 
ment, observation. The fact of creation, of the origination of 
things, she does not concern herself about. It is not a fact observed, 
there was no observer ; it is not one of a series of facts occurring 
according to law, because having occurred but once it is outside 
any such hypothesis : — 

"Creation or destruction of matter, increase or diminution of matter, lies 
beyond the domain of Science ; her domain is confined entirely to the changes 
of matter." 3 

Now the origination of the Law of Evolution from the Absolute 
Cause, Mr. Spencer openly avows as an object of Science, as the 
ultimate truth contained in it. Mr. Spencer's law of Evolution, 
therefore, as an expression of the Physical Sciences, cannot claim 
the epithet " scientific " in the strict sense in which it ought to 
claim it, i. e., in the sense in which it is employed by all physical 
scientists. But let us allow Mr. Spencer a wider latitude, let us 
suppose that an inquiry into the nature of the agent behind phe- 
nomena be a part of Science, as he asserts it is (§ 30, p. 105), 
even then his Science forfeits the title of scientific. For even in 
this loose sense the word scientific must have the attributes of 
Matthew Arnold's literary definition : " what is admittedly certain 
and verifiable." 4 Or as Bixby expresses it : — 

1 Eev. A. Washburne, D. D., Religion and Science, Atlas Series of Essays, op. cit., 
p. 46. 2 McCosh, Bedell Lectures, op. cit, p. 70. 

3 Joseph Le Conte, Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces, in 
Appendix to The Conservation of Energy, by Balfour Stewart, p. 171, New York, 
1871. Conf. Bixby, Religion and Science Allies, p. 19, Chicago, 1889. 

4 op. cit., p. 38. 




V 



132 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

In its broader sense, it (Science) signifies all systematized and trustworthy 

7 7 111 




But it has been demonstrated that Mr. Spencer's evolution of 
conscious from physical existence is not only not certain, verifiable, 
trustworthy, but in every sense of the word inconceivable. 

And finally, contemplating the Theory of Evolution, in accord- 
ance with Mr. Spencer's wishes, as based on the Unknowable 
Persistent Force, we ask are the laws and potencies existent in 
the primal nebulous mist from which has been worked out this 
wonderful Kosmos, are those laws and the potencies operating ac- 
cording to those laws, the work of wisdom or unwisdom f If the 
work of wisdom, there is an Intelligence behind them, and the 
theory of the Unintelligent Unknowable disqualifies itself by the 
statement ; if the work of unwisdom, they are the operation of 
unintelligent, blind force, the work of chance. This latter hypoth- 
esis must be Mr. Spencer's, his Unknowable Cause is unintelligent, 
blind, mechanical force; 2 the Kosmos, therefore, is the play of 
chance, the sport of accident, and accident and chance are unscientific. 
This makes Mr. Spencer's Evolutionism, which is the product and 
the growth of modern scientific research, forsooth, no improvement 
on the Democritean Atomism. Here, if ever, the words of Bacon 
come in : — 

" Democritus and Epicurus, . . . when they asserted the fabric of all things to 
be raised by a fortuitous concourse of those atoms, without the help of mind, they 
became universally ridiculous. So far are physical causes from drawing men off 
from God and Providence, that on the contrary, the philosophers employed in 
discovering them can find no rest, but by flying to God or Providence at last." 3 

A word in conclusion by way of contrast — if unwisdom be chance 
and unscientific, wisdom, the antithesis of chance, must needs be 
scientific, the theistic doctrine of a God behind Evolution must 
stand out as scientific, and, in the words of Hume, quoted by Prof. 

1 op. til, p. 17. 

2 Note. — The following words of Max Miiller come in with striking fitness 
here : — " Sa Majeste le Hasard has long been dethroned in all scientific studies, 
and neither Natural Selection, nor Struggle for Life, nor the influence of environ- 
ment or any other aliases of it, will account for the Logos, the thought, which 
with its thousand eyes looks at us through the transparent curtain of nature, and 
calls for thoughtful recognition from the Logos within us" ( Why I am not an 
Agnostic, op. cit., p. 893). 

3 Advancement of Learning, p. 143, op. cit. 



THE UNKNOWABLE AS THE NEW GOD. 133 

Tyndall, it " renders scientific action free." l The words of the 
anti-theistic Biichner point in the same direction : — 

" The great Newton pretended to see the finger of God in the tangential or 
lateral motion of the stars ; and Laplace himself could not refrain from exclaim- 
ing : ' O philosopher, show me the hand which has thrown the planets on the 
tangents of their orbits !' " 2 

So scientific, so verifiable, so trustworthy is the idea of Infinite 
Mind behind the worlds ! And if Mr. Spencer be unscientific in 
asserting the genesis of the mental from the material, in the evolu- 
tionary process, must not the theistic evolutional view, for obverse 
reasons, be predicated as scientific for wisely refraining from any 
such statement ? The apologetic standpoint of this essay has not 
need to pronounce on each of the exegetical opinions respecting 
the Sacred Cosmogony. We have discussed the third of these 
opinions, viz., the evolutional view, as it presents the scientific 
character of Christianity in direct contrast with Mr. Spencer's 
theory of Evolution. This brings us to the final proposition — is 
the Unknowable to be the New God ? 

§ 31. — The Unknowable as The New God. 

It will suffice to say but a few words on this point by way of 
recapitulation. For the whole of the preceding chapter is the firm 
and fixed laying down of the truth that the quintessence of all true 
Religion is Knowledge and Practice, Love, Admiration, Fear, 
Gratitude, Consciousness of our Insufficiency and Dependence. Con- 
trarily, Mr. Spencer's alleged Eeligion is Nescience, Mystery pure 
and unmixed, Theory. Mr. Spencer's Religion is without Love ; for 
who can love that which he knows nothing about? Without Admira- 
tion ; who can admire blind, brute Force? Without Fear, i. e., with- 
out the fear of wrong-doing and the fear of the punishment sure to 
follow it ; for the Unknowable punishes not neither does it reward. 
Without consciousness of our Insufficiency ; for the Unknowable can- 
not perfect us, neither can he debase. Without Dependence, unless it 
be a dependence akin to that we feel on the law of gravitation or 
the laws of health. Such a dependence, however, will scarcely 
be called Religion. The indefinite consciousness of a mystery, an 
unintelligent Force which we know nothing at all about, which 

1 The Belfast Address, op. tit., p. 494. • 2 op. tit., p. 106. 



) 



134 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

can neither injure nor benefit us, love us nor hate us, which is as 
much a stranger to us as the spots on the sun, a kind of meta- 
physical conundrum, but for all Religious intents and purposes 
practically Nil. 



CHAPTER III. 

Conspectus and Conclusion. 

In directing the eye to view the journey we have just finished, 
the following massive outlines appear to view. Not regarding the 
large series of unproven statements, the substitution of new, incorrect 
and undemonstrated definitions of the most vital concepts, and the 
misstatements affecting the anti-agnostic doctrine, which defects, of 
themselves, suffice to vitiate at the root Mr. Spencer's theory, it will 
be enough to look at the following main aspects of The Unknowable. 

1. Mr. Spencer's Metaphysics as applied to Man and the Universe 
make them like the Berkeleyan matter endued with only an illusory 
existence. Man must reject as unreasonable the belief in the reality 
of self , the belief that he is a real individual distinct from other 
entities, the belief that he is a real agent. And yet, while he must, 
despite the irresistible conviction to the contrary, consider himself 
as a mere phantasmagorial existent, he must at the same time be- 
lieve that there exists outside of him a real bona fide existence. In 
a word, the unshakeable conviction that he himself has real existence 
is to be repudiated, but the unshakeable conviction that another 
being has it, must be admitted as the central fact in philosophy, 
and must be admitted because the conviction is unshakeable. The 
same principle that makes our existence a shadow, makes the 
Unknowable a reality ! 

2. Mr. Spencer's Metaphysics as applied to God and the Un- 
knowable make self-existence inconceivable and conclude, therefore it 
cannot be predicated of a Personal God. But — Mr. Spencer reasons 
— self-existence can be predicated of the Unknowable. — Again the 
concepts Cause and Absolute are contradictory, therefore they cannot 
reside in a Personal God ; the concepts Cause and Absolute though 
contradictory can reside in the Unknowable. — Once more, Infinity 
cannot be realized in thought, consequently, it is not an attribute of 
a Personal God ; Infinity of duration is equally unrealizable in 



CONSPECTUS AND CONCLUSION. 135 

thought, still it is an attribute of the Unknowable. — Again a Per- 
sonal God cannot be the absolute Cause, because the Absolute can enter 
into no relation, not even into the relation of cause to effect. The 
Unknowable can be the Absolute Cause and can enter into relation : 
The Unknowable as " the Non-relative is related to the Relative." 
— The Unknowable is without properties or qualities whatever, it is 
pure existence ; the Unknowable is not without properties, it is exist- 
ence plus the endowments Cause, Absolute. In fine, the Unknowable 
is logically a mere negation, still it is psychologically the most positive 
existence. This contradiction in our faculties is to be ignored, it is 
necessary for Mr. Spencer, he must have the Unknowable. 

3. This Logical Negative and Psychological Positive is the object 
of Religion. Its qualities are : it has mere existence, it is unintel- 
ligent Force, it knows nothing about us and we know nothing 
about it. It is a metaphysical puzzle, and has no interest in the 
world for us. It is a practical non-entity as far as Religion is 
concerned, for men will neither worship, nor love, nor fear, nor 
depend on what they know nothing at all about, and what they 
have not the least interest in. Religion is surely reduced to a 
modest existence, when it will fit in the formula that " it is alike 
our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through 
which all things exist as the Unknowable." 

4. The attitude of the Unknowable towards man's Moral End and 
Right Conduct is the denial of any such end. The Unknowable is 
unintelligent mechanical Force, and all things, believes Mr. Spencer, 
are so many manifestations of it. These manifestations differ, not 
in kind but in degree; mind is but a higher grade of matter, morality 
a higher grade of animal conduct. This annihilates all qualitative 
or specific distinction, between the end man should propose to him- 
self in his actions, and that which the inferior animals manifest in 
theirs. Prof. Huxley formulates it admirably : — 

" In the cycle of phenomena presented by man the animal no more moral end 
is discernible than in that presented by the wolf and the deer." l 

5. Mr. Spencer's theory of the Unknowable is, however, an inchoate 
return to the Realistic and Catholic teaching. Kant and Hume 
banished real existence, real causality, real substance, the reality of 
the Divine Being, the reality of a knowledge of Him. Mr. Spencer 
teaches the real existence of the Unknowable, affirms real causality 

1 Agnosticism and Christianity, Nineteenth Century, June, 1889. 



136 AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. 

of it, and proposes it as an object of religious worship. He also 
conceives it as a nude existence latent under appearances. The 
Scholastic idea of substance is an existent substratum which reveals 
itself in its qualities. The former concept is an inchoation of the 
latter, if it has not flowered into it, it is because Mr. Spencer has 
made, all throughout, a misuse of the principle of causation. And 
last of all, Mr. Spencer's indefinite consciousness of the Unknow- 
able, his use of the word nescience is in reality the same as our 
knowledge, the difference is but nominal. The consciousness that 
a thing exists, or that it has this or that quality, we term knowledge; 
Mr. Spencer is conscious that the Unknowable exists, that it is 
a First Cause, etc. This is knowledge not nescience. A difference 
of name is a useless logomachy. This difference would not exist, 
if Mr. Spencer, while substantially separate from Kant, did not 
think he was really at one with him. The former put the existence 
and every attribute of God beyond all consciousness ; with him He 
was truly a noumenon, unknowable. Mr. Spencer puts the divine 
existence and some of his attributes, within the domain of indefi- 
nite consciousness ; he must, nevertheless, have the Deity, with the 
German philosopher, unknowable. This so-called unknowableness 
maugre all this, must bear the opprobrium of a true unknowable- 
ness, its author will not allow that it is, will not dignify it with 
the right and title of knowledge. 

There is one thing about Mr. Spencer's religious theory that 
must be noted, it is nothing if not metaphysics. This is a true ap- 
proach to the Catholic and Aristotelian method, and casts reproach 
on and augurs the decay of the spirit of those philosophic scientists, 
whose shibboleth is, toute m&taphysique m' 6pouvante. 

6. The theory of the Unknowable is retrograde Scieyice and retro- 
grade Religion, just as it is retrograde Morality. — Retrograde Science, 
it is without an intelligible base, built on chance. Retrograde 
Religion, its religious object is an unintelligent, unlovable, uniu- 
fluencing Being, in substitution for Infinite Intelligence, Infinite 
Love, Infinite Influence. Mind in Religion, Mind in Morality, 
Mind in Science ; not mere unintelligent Force in Religion, mere 
unintelligent Force in Morality, mere unintelligent Force in Science, 
is the only hope of the progressive spirit of this and of every age 
to come. " In Thy light we shall see light : " " You adore that which 
you know not : we adore that which we know." 



Vidit Sacra Facultas, 

T. O'Gokman, p. t. Decanus. 
G. Paries, p. t. a Secretis. 



Vidit Rector Universitatis, 

J. J. KEANE, 

Episcopus Jassen. 






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